Reframing the rising powers debate: state transformation and foreign policy

Abstract

The volume that we introduce breaks with the prevalent tendency in International Relations (IR) scholarship to treat rising powers (such as China, Russia, India and Brazil) as unitary actors in international politics. Although a neat demarcation of the domestic and international domains, on which the notion of unitary agency is premised, has always been a myth, these states’ uneven integration into the global political economy has eroded this perspective’s empirical purchase considerably. Instead, this collection advances the concept of ‘state transformation’ as a useful lens through which to examine rising power states’ foreign policymaking and implementation. State transformation refers to the pluralisation of cross-border state agency via contested and uneven processes of fragmentation, decentralisation and internationalisation of state apparatuses. The volume demonstrates the significance of state transformation processes for explaining some of these states’ most important foreign policy agendas, and outlines the implications for the wider field in IR.     

Russia says no: Power,status, and emotions in foreign policy

Since 2003, Russian foreign behavior has become much more assertive and volatile toward the West, often rejecting U.S. diplomatic initiatives and overreacting to perceived slights. This essay explains Russia's new assertiveness using social psychological hypotheses on the relationship between power, status, and emotions. Denial of respect to a state is humiliating. When a state loses status, the emotions experienced depend on the perceived cause of this loss. When a state perceives that others are responsible for its loss, it shows anger. The belief that others have unjustly used their power to deny the state its appropriate position arouses vengefulness. If a state believes that its loss of status is due to its own failure to live up to expectations, the elites will express shame. Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has displayed anger at the U.S. unwillingness to grant it the status to which it believes it is entitled, especially during the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, and most recently Russia's takeover of Crimea and the 2014 Ukrainian Crisis. We can also see elements of vengefulness in Russia's reaction to recognition of Kosovo, U.S. missile defense plans, the Magnitsky act, and the Snowden affair.     

Agile small state agency: heuristic plays and flexible national identity markers in Finnish foreign policy

Studies of small state foreign policy tend to draw relatively bleak conclusions when it comes to small state agency. However, I will examine alternative and more positive modalities of small state agency. One such modality is agility, the strategic maneuverability to take advantage of a chancy environment. Besides leading to dangerous rigidities and biases, particular types of foreign policy imageries and heuristics may also facilitate experimental and agile agency. In studying this possibility, Finland is chosen as an illustrative case because historically Finland has faced a particularly constraining geopolitical context and because it has managed to adapt to multiple upheavals and to different geopolitical contexts. The emphasis is on the heuristic dynamics inherent in Finnish foreign policy culture that have allowed it to actively meet the emerging challenges. Instead of taking a detailed historical approach, I seek to understand the role of the relatively flexible and combinable embodied cultural models, i.e. thick images. They allow for agency-related experimentation that may bring added value that allows Finland to exceed the constraints of the brute geopolitical position. After reviewing multiple embodied foreign policy images, I will use them to analyse New Year's speeches by the Finnish Presidents Ahtisaari and Halonen in order to see how the fickle present is made to resonate innovatively with the known, commonplace, and mythical.     

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.     

A classic debate revisited: The policy/administration dichotomy in tax polittcs

One of the oldest debates in political science is over the separation of policymaking from administration. The primary purpose of this paper is to resurrect the distinction as both a guide to empirical theory describing the political process and as an element in the normative debate over how that political process should ideally work. I first discuss the classic dichotomy and arguments for and against it. I then argue that tax politics can best be described as a trichotomy, in which there resides a “middle” set of actors, labelled professional policy managers, who have very important policymaking roles, but who also have many characteristics of administrators. In making these distinctions, I also outline a distinctive form of accountability that resides with each set of actors. Based on these forms of accountability, I reiterate the importance of separating and distancing “pure” administration from policymaking and political pressures. I also argue that effective policy is best insured by balancing the roles of policymakers, policy managers and administrators.     

Mother Russia and the crisis of the Russian national family: The puzzle of gender in revolutionary Russia*

Once upon a time there lived a rich widow, with a beautiful face and vigorous body, not old and not young, by the name of Mother Russia. She had been married twice, the first time to the peasant‐bogatyr Mikula Selianinovich, and the second to the no less renowned v/arnoT‐bogatyr Il'ia Muromets.

Her husbands had left her countless riches. And God had blessed both her marriages with many children. For the most part, her children were hard‐working people and valiant warriors. They worked their father's land and protected it from hostile neighbors.

But, as always happens, the family was not without its black sheep. Mother Russia also had some children who were good‐for‐nothings, idlers, drunkards, and empty‐headed chatterboxes. And it was not surprising that these good‐for‐nothings grabbed power over all the widow's other children.

As the loving mother began to grieve and take ill from their indecent debauchery, they assumed control over her and all her possessions. And they began to squander and drink up her wealth, and to send all sorts of healers to try and cure their sick mother.¹     

The ambiguity of US foreign policy towards Africa

Since 9/11, the American policy towards Africa has been strongly influenced by national security interests and in particular by the fight against international terrorism and Islamic radicalisation. Traditionally, the American Africa policy has been the result of bureaucratic policymaking with the Pentagon and the State Department playing prominent roles. The paper argues that in the current century, evangelical Christian lobby groups have gained increasing influence on policymaking on Africa. Because policymaking has been influenced by a number of different actors, the American Africa policy may appear incoherent and ambiguous if judged narrowly on the expectation that it only aims to take care of US national security concerns and economic self-interests. The paper concludes that Africa was important to the United States during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama because of the combination of strong security interests and strong domestic lobby groups that have pressured to place Africa on the US foreign policy agenda.     

The United States naval blockade of Iraq: a foreign policy and international law analysis

This is the second of a two part essay by Commander Rosen into the causes of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the modern law of blockade, the political wisdom and the lawfulness of imposing a limited blockade of Iraq. Defects in the current regime of blockade were explored.

In part II, Commander Rosen closely explores the legal justification for the U.S. use of force in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. It is frequently overlooked that the U.S. naval blockade (it was called a “naval interdiction”) was a U.S.-only operation from August 12th until August 25, 1990. As a pedagogical exercise, this period is extremely important because the U.S. use of force (by its naval units), in response to a written request by deposed Emir of Kuwait, must be justified under the U.N. Charter to be proper under international law. Once the U.N. Security Council authorized the use of force on August 25, 1990 to enforce the U.N. embargo, then the operation became one in which the U.N., as a corporate body, was acting. Since most low intensity conflicts since 1945, have involved lawful use of force issues outside of Security Council purview, the U.S. unilateral military action (blockade) against Iraqi shipping must be analyzed. It is reasonable to anticipate that future controversies of this sort will occur because of philosophic divisions among the U.N. Security Council permanent members or because there is anaequate time for the U.N. “Security Council to meet and obtain the forces required to insert into a region of conflict. Resurrection of the moribund U.N. Military Staff Committee might be one of the lessons learned from this particular episode.

The United States had the benefit of a U.N. resolution on August 25, 1990 to justify its naval action. Before that date, the legal issue arises whether, in the early stages, national self-defense grounds permitted the use of force against Iraq (blockade) since deprivation of assured access to critical materials (oil) can be considered an act of aggression under some theories of international law. Commander Rosen concludes that the low intensity blockade was probably not authorized, under a theory of national self-defense, because the U.S. had no hard evidence on August 12, 1990 (the day the blockade commenced) that Saddam Hussein would deprive the U.S. of access to Gulf Oil supplies. But, because of the pervasive interdepencies of world economies, world food supplies, and petroleum access, the case was extremely close.

The customary international law of intervention (protection of nationals or humanitarian) and the law of collective self-defense was explored relative to the U.S. imposition of a limited naval blockade. Commander Rosen concludes that intervention theory will not support the limited naval blockade since there was insufficient evidence that U.S. citizens were in imminent danger (as in Grenada) and the blockade operation was too limited and indirect in scope to produce the type of rapid results which have come to be associated with a humanitarian intervention (as in the Congo). But, since Kuwait’s territorial sovereignty had been grossly violated as a result of illegal aggression, Kuwait was privileged under the U.N. Charter to request and receive defense assistance from the United States under Article 51 to recover lost territory. Arguments that the right to act in collective self-defense under Article 51 is limited to the nation which itself is attacked (or a nation closely aligned with the victim) are rejected as contrary to the U.N. norms of promoting community resistance to illegal aggression.

While the Persian Gulf dispute has resulted in open hostilities, international law issues existed whether, in the early stages, the blockade was militarily necessary and whether the blockade could be extended to the Jordanian port of Aqaba, because of conflicting reports as to Jordan’s adherence with the U.N. embargo, were explored. International law would probably not support an extension of the blockade to Aqaba because it would be seen an improper interference with Jordan’s neutrality. Similarly, forbidding the passage of U.N. medical and food convoys into Iraq was seen as a breach of international law provided such shipments were specifically authorized and supervised by the U.N. security council (to ensure that the food was only distributed to civilians).     

The Brazilian military after the Cold War: In search of a mission

What purpose should Brazil’s armed forces serve in upcoming years? Democratization, the end of the Cold War, and Brazil’s economic crisis have prompted an unprecedented debate over this question by narrowing the range of tasks that the Brazilian military can pursue. This article investigates civilian and military support for various possible military roles and analyzes their compatibility with civilian control. It argues that the political weakness of the current government, the economic crisis, and growing social unrest militate against an expansion of the military’s conventional external defense mission and in favor of non-combatant domestic functions. This has begun to occur despite military enthusiasm for the former and military reservations about the latter. The military’s adoption of multiple domestic assignments in a country with a tradition of military interventionism poses risks to civilian control.