The Politics of International Law in the Post-Soviet Space: Do Georgia,Ukraine, and Russia ‘Speak’ International Law in International Politics Differently?

Abstract

Since the Soviet Union’s collapse, Ukraine, Georgia and Russia have faced the challenge of taking their positions in the politics of international law as part of their transformation processes. Strong dynamics of conflict have shaped these states’ politico-legal actions and interactions, for example, the Russo–Georgian War, the annexation of Crimea and the armed conflict in East Ukraine. This essay explores whether, how and why Georgia, Ukraine and Russia ‘speak’ international law in international politics differently. It discusses conceptual approaches to empirically analysing the processes of translating political preferences into legal arguments as well as how ‘communicators of international law’ in the post-Soviet region use the language of international law differently.     

‘Rising Power’ Status and the Evolution of International Order: Conceptualising Russia’s Syria Policies

Abstract

Taking Syria’s armed conflict as a case study to illustrate the processes of normative contestation in international relations, this article is interested in re-examining the typology of Russia as a ‘rising power’ to account for ‘rise’ in a non-material dimension. The article integrates the concept of ‘rising power’ with the literature on international norm dynamics to reflect on the rationale for Russia’s engagement in Syria despite adverse material preconditions. It will argue that Russian norm divergence from alleged ‘Western’ norms illustrates Moscow’s ambition to co-define the conditions for legitimate transgressions of state sovereignty.     

Centred discourse,decentred practice: the relational production of Russian and Chinese ‘rising’ power in Central Asia

Abstract

This paper challenges dominant understandings of ‘rising powers’ by developing a decentred, relational account of Russia and China in Central Asia. We ask whether Moscow and Beijing’s regional integrative strategies do not guide, but rather are led by, everyday interactions among Russian and Chinese actors, and local actors in Central Asia. Rising powers, as a derivative of ‘Great Powers’, are frequently portrayed as structurally comparable units that concentrate power in their executives, fetishise territorial sovereignty, recruit client states, contest regional hegemony and explicitly oppose the post-1945 international order. In contrast, we demonstrate that the centred discourse of Eurasian integration promoted by Russian and Chinese leaders is decentred by networks of business and political elites, especially with regard to capital accumulation. Adopting Homi K. Bhabha’s notion of mimicry (subversion, hybridity) and J. C. Scott’s conception of mētis (local knowledge, agency), and using examples of Russian and Chinese investments and infrastructure projects in Central Asia, we argue that in order to understand centring discourse we must look to decentring practices at the periphery; that is, rising power is produced through ongoing interactions between actors at the margins of the state’s hegemonic reach.     

Maritime Strategies of Rising Powers: developments in China and Russia

Abstract

This paper seeks to uncover the drivers of maritime strategy formulation in Russia and China, two active players on the international stage that have often been identified as both rising and regional powers. The paper takes as its starting point the realist theory of state power and threat perception, which provide the means and motivation for states to accumulate material capabilities in an effort to safeguard their position in the international system. Given the increasing pressures of a changing security environment, China’s and Russia’s maritime strategies show a trend towards greater complexity and capability. The paper also addresses the impact of the revolution in military affairs ( rma ) and its subsequent manifestation as force transformation in Western states, especially the USA. Given that this new, qualitatively focused way of war has gained supremacy, at least where high-intensity inter-state war is concerned, the question remains of whether the Chinese and Russians will choose to emulate the leading powers in the system or, instead, will forge into the unknown and formulate an entirely different and innovative maritime strategy.     

How States Exploit Jihadist Foreign Fighters

ABSTRACT

Jihadist foreign fighters are frequently described as non-state actors whose prominence challenges the traditional, state-dominated international system and our understanding of it. In practice, however, foreign fighters rely heavily on the very states they reject. Some of the most important foreign fighter movements in the world today receive massive and explicit state support, while still others rely on states to tolerate their fund-raising, transit, recruitment, and other core activities. Yet the scope, scale, and nature of this reliance varies tremendously, as does its overall impact. To stop or at least limit these flows, it is vital to change the policies and capacities of these state backers.     

Between Russia and a Hard Place: Great Power Grievances and Central Asian Ambivalence

Abstract

This essay asks how Central Asian states have responded to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and salvos against the West, as a means to assess how Russia and the Central Asian states understand their national interests and exercise state power. It argues that the post-Soviet region shares a cynical and geopolitically driven view of the exercise of global power. Yet Russia has sometimes deployed its resources to advance short-term ideological objectives, whereas Central Asian foreign policy is pragmatic and opportunistic. The Ukraine crisis threatened to coerce the Central Asian states into conformity with Russia’s interests; ironically, their dependence on Russia has enabled their freedom of action in foreign policy, within limits. The essay highlights the ways that geography enables and constrains the execution of foreign policy, and considers the ambiguous role ideology plays in the formulation of national interests and the prospects for international cooperation.     

Peripheral states and conformity to international norms: the dilemma of the marginalised

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand the seemingly paradoxical behaviour of states of the Global South, which on one the hand conform to transnational norms in order to integrate into the international society and on the other hand (sometimes simultaneously) differentiate themselves from them. To that end, this article develops the dilemma of the marginalised in order to show that conformity and differentiation become two paradoxical strategies for marginalised actors to pursue the same goal: equality with powerful states. The transformation of the Organisation of African Unity to the African Union, where significant changes in Africa’s policy vis-à-vis global powers took place, serves as a case study to illustrate how marginalised actors struggle between conformity and differentiation in order to claim their place in the international arena. It also shows how the dilemma of the marginalised can be compelling to help us understand the predicaments of marginalised actors across vastly different situations of structural inequality. Acknowledging the dilemma helps us understand their behaviour rather than to dismiss it as irrational, thereby recognising Third World agency in shaping the international system.     

Can constituent states influence foreign and security policy? Coalitional dynamics in India

Abstract

The Indian state has undergone significant transformation since the late 1980s, most notably the extensive decentralisation of power, with consequences for the formation and implementation of Indian foreign policy. This article explores the role of India’s constituent states explaining the extent and limitations of their autonomy and influence. It deploys and extends the state transformation approach to incorporate considerations of issue area and coalition type. Under coalitions led by typical national parties, subnational governments are less likely to influence foreign and security policy. Under the same coalition type, they are more likely to behave autonomously on non-traditional security issues such as sharing of water resources with neighbouring countries. They are less likely to behave autonomously on security issues such as the transnational expression of ethnic solidarity. Under coalitions led by atypical national parties or regional parties, subnational governments are likely to exercise a moderate level of autonomy and influence on issue areas such as transnational expression of ethnic solidarity. They are likely to exercise a high level of autonomy and influence on non-traditional security issues such as sharing of water resources. The framework is illustrated through Tamil Nadu’s activism on Sri Lanka, and West Bengal’s position on water-sharing with Bangladesh.     

Reinterpreting India's Rise through the Middle Power Prism

Abstract

India's spectacular rise in recent years has been the source of hyperbolic theorising and speculation on its major power status. Middle power theory offers a set of dynamic analytical parameters which allow for re-evaluating India's global influence and identifying both strengths and weaknesses of its power projection and resources. Placing emphasis on themes of Third World leadership, good international citizenship, multilateral activism, bridge-building diplomacy, and coalition-building with like-minded states, the middle power concept can encapsulate key aspects of India's contemporary agency and account for structural dynamics which constitute a reformist world-view through the reconfiguration of the Indian state within the existing world order. Overall, middlepowermanship delineates fundamental continuities in India's foreign policy tradition, epitomises India's existing position in the neoliberal world order, while providing a good indication of the directions India will take on the global stage in the short and medium-term.     

The family state: a non-realist approach to understanding Indonesia’s foreign policy

ABSTRACT

The existing literature on Indonesia’s foreign policy has excluded the state from the category of an agent which shapes the country’s external affairs. This trend certainly ignores the notion that foreign policy is a unique state activity taking place in the interface between domestic and international politics. To fill the gap, this article explores the idea about the family state and looks at its influence on the conduct of Indonesia’s international relations. The argument is that the family state pursues order in international society in which sovereignty can be maintained. Indonesia plays the role of an order-maker in Southeast Asia through the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). The order-oriented actions are displayed by Jakarta’s diplomacy to resolve border disputes with neighbouring countries in the region.     

Small State Discourses in the International Political Economy

Abstract

This article supports growing calls to ‘take small states seriously’ in the international political economy but questions prevailing interpretations that ‘smallness’ entails inherent qualities that create unique constraints on, and opportunities for, small states. Instead, we argue that discourses surrounding the ‘inherent vulnerability’ of small states, especially developing and less-developed states, may produce the very outcomes that are attributed to state size itself. By presenting small states as a problem to be solved, vulnerability discourses divert attention away from the existence of unequal power structures that, far from being the natural result of smallness, are in fact contingent and politically contested. The article then explores these themes empirically through discussion of small developing and less-developed states in the Commonwealth and the World Trade Organization (WTO), considering in particular how smallness has variously been articulated in terms of what small states either cannot or will not do.     

Informed powerlessness: child marriage interventions and Third World girlhood discourses

Child marriage has gained increased international prominence over the past decades. Organisations working with the issue have promoted empowering girls as the best strategy to address it. Informed by postcolonial feminist theory, this article will locate these discourses in broader ‘turn to the girl’ and ‘turn to agency’ in international development, analysing how Third World girlhood, agency, resistance and voice are conceptualised. Girls are constructed as threatened by their families and communities, with agency exercised through resistance and materialised by their voice. I argue that this ignores the complexity of decision-making processes and broader structural factors related to child marriage, so that interventions providing ‘empowerment-as-information’ for girls to be agents of change instead leave them in a state of informed powerlessness.     

Righting the Resource Curse: Institutional Politics and State Capabilities in Edo State,Nigeria

Abstract

The poor record of liberal reforms sponsored by the international community in postcolonial settings underscores the real politik of institutional change. What we call a ‘new normal’ in development policy and practice foregrounds the role of agency – leadership, networks of connectors and convenors, entrepreneurs and activists – but it has less to say about the political and economic conditions of possibility in which agents operate. The putative powers of agency seem most challenged in contexts of extreme resource dependency and the resource curse. The particular case of Edo, a state in the oil rich Niger delta region of Nigeria, illustrates the intersection of agency and structural conditions to show how ‘asymmetric capabilities’ can emerge to create, constrain and make possible particular reform options.     

Persuasion and Predation: The Effects of U.S. Military Aid and International Development Aid on Civilian Killings

ABSTRACT

Powerful states frequently employ foreign aid to pursue international security objectives. Yet aid's effectiveness will be undermined if it exacerbates the effects of conflict on civilians within recipient states. This article investigates how international development aid and U.S. military aid influence recipient governments' incentives and ability to target civilians. U.S. military aid has a persuasion effect on state actors, which decreases a recipient state's incentives and necessity to target civilians. Development aid flows, however, trigger a predation effect in some environments, exacerbating civilian targeting. An analysis of aid flows in 135 countries on civilian killings between 1989–2011 provides support for both the persuasion and predation effects associated with aid.     

‘Fragile States’: introducing a political concept

The special issue ‘Fragile States: A Political Concept’ investigates the emergence, dissemination and reception of the notion of ‘state fragility’. It analyses the process of conceptualisation, examining how the ‘fragile states’ concept was framed by policy makers to describe reality in accordance with their priorities in the fields of development and security. The contributors to the issue investigate the instrumental use of the ‘state fragility’ label in the legitimisation of Western policy interventions in countries facing violence and profound poverty. They also emphasise the agency of actors ‘on the receiving end’, describing how the elites and governments in so-called ‘fragile states’ have incorporated and reinterpreted the concept to fit their own political agendas. A first set of articles examines the role played by the World Bank, the oecd, the European Union and the g7+ coalition of ‘fragile states’ in the transnational diffusion of the concept, which is understood as a critical element in the new discourse on international aid and security. A second set of papers employs three case studies (Sudan, Indonesia and Uganda) to explore the processes of appropriation, reinterpretation and the strategic use of the ‘fragile state’ concept.     

Coordination and control in Russia’s foreign policy: travails of Putin’s curators in the near abroad

Abstract

This article seeks to challenge the conception of the Russian state as being centred on Vladimir Putin by looking at the actors implementing Russia’s foreign policy in its near abroad. In particular, it explores the activities of curators (kuratory), a term applied in Russia to describe officials tasked with making things work often bypassing, and sometimes competing with, formal institutions. Following the state transformation framework, the argument put forward in the article is that curation (kuratorstvo), as a practice of coordination and control in Russia’s system of governance, can be seen as a manifestation of fragmentation and internationalisation of Russia’s foreign policy making. The empirical basis for this article is a case study of Russia’s policy towards Abkhazia, which Russia officially recognised as a sovereign state in 2008. This article addresses the involvement of curators in their attempts to exert political influence as an expression of fragmentation as well as emerging institutionalised curation in development assistance as a part of internationalisation.     

Transnational governance of cybersecurity: policy challenges and global inequalities in cyber capacity building

Abstract

Connectivity infrastructure is constantly expanding, increasing internet access across countries, regions and socio-political contexts. Given the fast-changing geography of the internet, there is a growing demand to strengthen cyber capacity beyond national frameworks, in order to develop a transnationally coherent and coordinated governance approach to cybersecurity. In this context, cyber capacity building initiatives are increasingly central in international debates, with the ambition to support countries in the Global South in fostering their cybersecurity strategy from technical and policy perspectives. This article discusses the key factors explaining states’ efforts to enhance their cyber capacity. Based on a cross-national quantitative research approach, the findings contradict international relations (IR)-derived approaches to cybersecurity, which assume that countries develop their cyber capacity according to external security threats, domestic politics or norms. In line with existing research on the role that science plays in policymaking processes more broadly, our results suggest instead that a country’s science and technical knowledge is the most robust explanation for that state’s cyber capacity level. These findings emphasise the need for policymakers to support countries in the Global South in developing their cyber capacity beyond national security paradigms by strengthening education and technical skills in contexts lacking in this resource.     

When States Die: geographic and territorial pathways to state death

Abstract

State death, understood as the formal loss of control over foreign policy, is an important but neglected issue in the international relations literature. When do states die and why? How do states exit the system? The consequences of state death can be wide-ranging, from forced migration movements, regional instability, to general famine. Despite these severe consequences, political scientists have yet to adequately study the causes of state death. Fazal finds that states are prone to death when they are located as a buffer between two rivals; this suggests that being a buffer state is a cause of state death. Our expansion of current research seeks to add the concept of territorial disputes to the state death literature. We suggest that states are at greater risk of death when they become involved in territorial disputes that raise the stakes of conflict. The resulting research demonstrates that a reliable predictor of state death is engagement in a territorial dispute. Territorial disputes are the most prevalent issue that leads to war and can also be a leading cause of state death.     

BRITISH GOVERNANCE IN TRANSITION: A CASE STUDY OF THE NORTHERN IRELAND CIVIL SERVICE

ABSTRACT

In comparisons of the internal governmental arrangements within states, the United Kingdom (UK) is ordinarily categorised as a unitary state conforming to the ‘Westminster model’. However, this article contends that the changing nature of British governance over the last two decades means that the UK is better viewed as a ‘union state’ that conforms more readily to a ‘differentiated polity model’. Nowhere is the reality of differentiation more clearly exemplif ied than in respect of the British civil service. To illustrate the extent of differentiation, the article presents a case study of the characteristics and trends in the civil service of Northern Ireland for, while the politics of the Province have received great attention, its system of public administr ation has been chronically under-reported. The article considers the changing structures, policy process and impact of public management reforms as well as the restoration of devolved government. Finally, it summarises how the evidence from Northern Ireland informs theoretical understanding as well as its implications for the rest of the UK and beyond.     

State Building for Peace: a new paradigm for international engagement in post-conflict fragile states?

This article is intended to analyse two leading approaches that have guided international efforts to promote peace and development in conflict-afflicted fragile states since the 1990s, namely peace building and state building. In a relatively recent development a growing number of donors has sought to bring these two closer together, based upon the perception that the challenges posed by (post-)conflict fragile states need to be addressed through an approach that combines both—‘state-building for peace’, as the undp has put it. The article thus seeks to explore how the processes of building peace are related to the processes of building more resilient, effective and responsive states in (post-)conflict settings. It provides an overview of the evolution of these two concepts and analyses key complementarities between peace building and state building. It also explores the challenges that arise for both on the basis of these complementarities. The article goes on to examine some of the most significant tensions that arise between the two, and what these tensions may imply for the international assistance community. By way of a conclusion the article offers a few key lessons that emerge from the analysis for improved donor policy and practice in state building for peace efforts.