Sociology and international relations: legacies and prospects

While sociological concepts have often been implicitly used in International Relations (IR), recent years have seen a more explicit engagement between IR and Sociology. As with any such interdisciplinary assignation, there are both possibilities and challenges contained within this move: possibilities in terms of reducing IR's intellectual autism and opening the discipline towards potentially fertile terrain that was never, actually, that distant; challenges in that interdisciplinary raiding parties can often serve as pseudonyms for cannibalism, shallowness and dilettantism. This forum reviews the sociological turn in IR and interrogates it from a novel vantage point—how sociologists themselves approach IR concepts, debates and issues. Three sociological approaches—classical social theory, historical sociology and Foucauldian analysis—are critically deployed to illuminate IR concerns. In this way, the forum offers the possibility of (re)establishing exchanges between the two disciplines premised on a firmer grasp of social theory itself. The result is a potentially more fruitful sociological turn, one with significant benefits for IR as a whole.     

Teaching international relations in Thailand: status and prospects

International relations (IR) as it is taught in Thailand possessesdevelopmental characteristics that have curbed its growth inthe past. Through a combination of institutional and trend analyses,it will be argued that IR teaching in Thailand is at a turningpoint where externally driven developments are compelling acertain level of professionalization and engagement with globaldebates. Received for publication August 28, 2008. Accepted for publication September 30, 2008.     

Inter-regionalism in international relations: Comparing APEC and ASEM

  Depending on one's theoretical perspective, inter-regionalism is assumed by IR scholars to have arisen in response to the need to check the exalted power of the United States (and, in the economic realm, also the European Union and East Asia) and/or the growing complexity of world politics (the rise of “interdependence” or “globalisation”). More recently, inter-regionalism has also been interpreted as a way to enhance regional collective identities. This paper looks at the evolution and recent performance of APEC and ASEM in the light of these theoretical assumptions about the origins and the functions of APEC and ASEM. Its principal findings are puzzling: while there are indications that APEC and ASEM were indeed meant by governments to fulfil some of the functions identified by those theoretical perspectives, the evidence that APEC or ASEM effectively served any of them is thin. Their actual functions and their durability against the background of a seemingly poor political track record therefore need to be rethought. RID="*" ID="*" A more extensive version of this paper will be published in: H?nggi H/Roloff R/Rüland J (eds), Interregionalism and International Politics: Stepping Stone to Global Governance? London & New York: Routledge (forthcoming).     

Teaching international relations in Vietnam: chances and challenges

This paper traces the evolution of the teaching of internationalrelations (IR) in Vietnam, from the establishment of the firstInstitute of International Relations in 1959 to the proliferationof departments of IR or international studies from the 1990s.It notes the limitations facing teachers of IR and efforts todevelop and standardize the curriculum in recent years. It alsoexamines the way national history is portrayed in the teachingof Vietnam's foreign policy and regional relations in SoutheastAsia, with increasing attention paid to the Association of SoutheastAsian Nations from the 1990s. Received for publication August 28, 2008. Accepted for publication October 2, 2008.     

国际关系民主化与国际法

任何理论问题的探究都植根于一定的时代背景.当今经济全球化以前所未有的深度、广度改变着人类生活的多维层面,全球性联系要求民主化的国际合作,全球性问题需要民主化的国际协调,全球性挑战呼唤民主化的解决方式.民主化成为当代国际关系发展的客观要求与基本趋势.     

Democracy in Latin America: Problems and prospects

This essay examines, by way of a series of brief country sketches, the current state of democratization in Latin America. It argues that in the formal sense progress has been significant but that only in a handful of countries has the economic development which democracy requires taken place. Many serious impediments (corruption, party weaknesses, public alienation, and poor policy implementation among them) remain. It will be decades before a definitive judgement can be reached.     

COIN flips: American international relations and counter-insurgency

The essay examines the recent rehabilitation of counter-insurgency doctrine, especially as conducted by third party interveners. The advent of the refurbished US (United States) Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency field manual, a volume with scholarly self-presentation, is the focal point. This essay is concerned with the dubious bases of the doctrinal justifications driving recent US interventions. The Vietnam War turns out to be the crucial case for American scholars and policy-makers who have construed the history of counter-insurgency there as an unacknowledged success, which today has become the standard account in American International relations scholarship. The essay is a critical examination of this development and of its implications.     

The study of international relations in Japan: towards a more international discipline

We deploy Waever’s sociology of science approach in a criticalcomparison of the American and Japanese international relations academies.We argue that there are four great debates in the American academy, andfour traditions of scholarship in the Japanese academy. We describethese debates and traditions in some detail, and identify andexplain points of contact and difference between the two respectiveacademies. We conclude by making a general case for methodologicalpluralism and offer reasons why the Japanese international relationsacademy is keen to sponsor a journal which is, in the wordsof Waever, able to ‘draw on national traditions while keepingup with American developments’.     

Another Weber: state,associations and domination in international relations

While there has arguably been a partial reception of Weber in international relations (IR), we argue here that his ideas have either been misunderstood or neglected. In order to highlight the most valuable Weberian insights, we focus on two topics of crucial importance to IR. First, in our view, Weber's crucial contribution to the study of states is not his alleged emphasis on the monopoly of violence but his concern with the problem of legitimacy, which is the key to understanding why individuals actually orient an action according to their beliefs in the idea of a state. Second, Weber conducted seminal historical investigations on religion, the rationalization of economic ethics, and organizations that show that the diffusion of isomorphism has little to do with supposedly uninterested and persuasive scientific and professional associations. Instead, more attention should be paid to rational domination and less to reified concepts such as John Meyer's ‘rationalized otherhood’. These arguments are also examined empirically.     

Hidden in plain sight: racism in international relations theory

This article addresses the centrality of racism in international relations (IR) theory; specifically, in realism and liberalism, two of the most prominent paradigms of IR. It examines the extent to which these major paradigms of world politics are oriented by racist—primarily, white supremacist—precepts that inhere within their foundational construct, namely, anarchy. I maintain that due to the centrality of anarchy—and other racially infused constructs—within these prominent paradigms, white supremacist precepts are not only nominally associated with the origins of the field, but have an enduring impact on IR theory and influence contemporary theses ranging from neorealist conceptions of the global system to liberal democratic peace claims, and constructivist theses as well.     

Moscow,Havana and asymmetry in international relations

Asymmetric relationships have been fundamental to the study of international relations, becoming even more important with the end of the Cold War, which left the United States as the sole global superpower. However, what impact does the distance between two countries have on the magnitude of an asymmetric relationship and the exposure of the countries to one another? This article examines these phenomena by analysing the relationship between Havana and Moscow from the time of the Russian Revolution in November 1917 to the present. Specifically it examines three distinct periods: from November 1917 until February 1960, from February 1960 until the implosion of the Soviet Union in late 1991 and from 1992 to the present. This article posits that the distance between two countries reduces neither the intensity of an asymmetric relationship nor the exposure of the two countries to one another.