State Building for Future Wars: Neoclassical Realism and the Resource-Extractive State

Neorealist theory holds that the international system compels states to adopt similar adaptive strategies—namely, balancing and emulation—or risk elimination as independent entities. Yet states do not always emulate the successful practices of the system's leading states in a timely and uniform fashion. Explaining this requires a theory that integrates systemic-level and unit-level variables: a “resource-extraction” model of the state in neoclassical realism. External vulnerability provides incentives for states to emulate the practices of the system's leading states or to counter such practices through innovation. Neoclassical realism, however, suggests that state power—the relative ability of the state to extract and mobilize resources from domestic society—shapes the types of internal balancing strategies that countries are likely to pursue. State power, in turn, is a function of the institutions of the state, as well as of nationalism and ideology. The experiences of six rising or declining great powers over the past three hundred years—China, France, Great Britain, Japan, Prussia (later Germany), and the United States—illustrate the plausibility of these hypotheses.     

差异、基础、条件:中日东北间产业合作基本思考

中日关系正常化以来 ,两国的经贸关系有了很大的发展 ,彼此都成为对方的重要伙伴。随着世界经济一体化进程的发展 ,中日经济的融合既成为东亚经济发展的需要 ,也成为中日两国经济发展的要求。尽管如此 ,还应充分认识到两国经济融合的差异、基础。我们认为实现中日经济的融合应从中国东北地区开始 ,同时 ,在现有的基础上如何提高东北经济的综合实力和经济水平 ,不断缩小与日本经济的差距 ,是实现中日经济融合的先决条件。     

A Rose by Any Other Name: Neoclassical Realism as the Logical and Necessary Extension of Structural Realism

Neoclassical realism is often criticized by non-realists for being an ad hoc and theoretically degenerative effort to explain away anomalies for neorealism. In this paper, I argue instead that neoclassical realism is a logical extension and necessary part of advancing neorealism. Structural realism argues that the system constrains but does not determine state action and where foreign policy departs from what would be ideal behavior given a state's structural position, domestic politics and ideas are generally the cause. This focus on mistakes and maladaptive behavior, seen in such neoclassical realist concepts as over-or under-balancing, is necessary to avoid falling into the trap of merely using domestic politics and ideas to make neorealism more determinate and explain residual variance in foreign policy choice unaccounted for by structure. The article attempts to correct the mistaken presumption that particular paradigms own domestic politics and ideas, asserting instead that each paradigm has access to these variables but must make them their own.     

Toward a New Paradigm for International Petroleum Trade

Petroleum is not just a commodity but a vital strategic asset with an impact on almost all aspects of the global economy. Although petroleum products are widely used all over the world, petroleum reserves, production and refineries are dominated by a handful of countries.     

Practice-Relevant Research in Mediation: Toward a Reflective Research Paradigm

Donald Schön has advanced the notion that a systematic understanding of professional practice can be built on the reflective insights of skilled practitioners. The reflective practitioner paradigm is well suited to mediation research. A study of divorce mediation illustrates how Schön's seminal ideas can be translated into research procedures with broad applicability to a variety of mediation settings.     

Reviving the Rhetoric of Realism: Politics and Responsibility in Grand Strategy

In both disciplinary history and contemporary methodology, realism is conventionally cast as the antithesis of rhetoric. Born in reaction against the empty liberal rhetoric of interwar liberalism and espousing a robust materialism and rigorous rationalism, realism often seems the obstacle that rhetoric's focus on language, narrative, and social construction must inevitably confront and the challenge around which debates must again inevitably revolve. This article challenges this vision of the relationship between rhetoric and realism. Returning to the birth of international relations in the immediate post-war era, we demonstrate that early realists perceived rhetoric as central to action in domestic as well as international politics and that it was particularly important in the United States. This realist rhetoric is marked by an engagement with grand politics, with the relationship between rhetoric, political identity, social mobilization, political leadership, and foreign policy. Rather than taking either the American state or its national interest for granted, post-war realists sought to counter the dangers of the dominant historical rhetorics of American foreign policy and to develop an alternative rhetoric that could insulate American democracy from destructive tensions and provide the basis for robust and responsible action in world affairs. Recovering the relationship between realism and rhetoric is important not only in challenging disciplinary and methodological orthodoxies that obstruct creative theorizing, but also for its incisive contributions to thinking about American foreign policy amidst the profound changes and challenges it confronts today.     

东北资源环境约束下的“赶超型”工业化模式研究

赶超战略常被人们称之为"GNP"增长率竞赛。日本和东亚国家战后经济腾飞的实践证明"赶超型"工业化是行之有效的,但建国后中国东北优先发展重工业的"赶超型"工业化却引起众多非议。针对这种工业化模式,东北"赶超型"工业化的基本思路是遵循动态比较优势原则,通过重化学工业资源禀赋优势的动态化,使该产业从资源依赖型升级为技术依赖型,进而实现经济从生产要素数量扩张的粗放型增长向生产要素质量深化的集约型增长转变,以达到GNP的可持续高增长率。     

Toward a measurement tool for the monitoring of media diversity and pluralism in South Africa: A public-centred approach

Abstract

This article responds to recent debates within South African media politics regarding the diversity and transformation of the print sector in the country, by suggesting a necessary refocus of previously used methods of measuring media diversity and proposing a more audience-centred approach. This audience-centred method is discussed with regard to meeting the demands of the normative understanding of media diversity, where the media are viewed as central to an individual's formulation of opinions and ideas, thus rendering the media – and particularly the news media – vital in fostering an enabled and informed citizenry. The argument proposes a bottom-up instead of a top-down methodology for measuring media diversity, by placing the primary focus on the public as the starting point, rather than the end point of the analysis, and validating this position through the normative view of the media's role in assisting citizens to formulate personal views. The article concludes by listing four key areas in which current debates on media diversity in South Africa should be realigned and refocused, including at a parliamentary level.     

Explaining “Market Authority” and Liberal Stability: Toward a Sociological–Constructivist Synthesis

Irrespective of the occasionally destructive financial consequences for individuals and the global economy, and warnings of its imminent collapse by critics, a globalising regime of capital mobility and neoliberal domestic policies appears in no danger of imminent collapse. This article explores the sources of the erstwhile stability of a liberal global economic order. The social mechanisms whereby people in many of the most capable states give their consent to “market authority” are explored with reference to Max Weber's sociology of legitimacy and Anthony Giddens' sociology of modernity. A constructivist theoretical construct of the changing “structure of intersubjective public belief” is developed as an explanatory heuristic. Liberalism is criticised for its conflation of choice with consent regarding its treatment of market processes, and vulnerabilities resulting from inconsistencies among liberal treatments of these are discussed.     

Toward a Multiprocess Model of Rivalry and the Democratic Peace

In this paper we examine recent efforts to combine quantitative research on the democratic peace with research on interstate rivalry. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we highlight problems with separately analyzing the processes associated with rivalry and the democratic peace. Specifically, we specify a multiprocess model and demonstrate that previous research on this topic may overestimate the pacifying effect of democracy on enduring rivalries. Since pairs of democracies are unlikely to experience interstate rivalry in the first place, the true effect of joint democracy is difficult to ascertain in a censored sample of interstate rivals. Our simulation results are consistent with historical data analysis that suggests that the pacifying effect of democracy is most pronounced in the enhanced probability of jointly democratic dyads averting the onset of rivalry. More generally, this article fits into a larger body of research that examines the confounding effect of selection bias on world politics research.     

In Search of Monsters: Realism and Progress in International Relations Theory after September 11

Whereas the end of the Cold War sparked debates within and among paradigms in the field, the response to September 11 has been comparatively muted. Some observers have questioned the significance of September 11, while others have cast doubt on the ability of realism to account for an outcome that falls outside of its emphasis on great-power conflict. Realism must not only address outside critics but also overcome internal resistance in the face of these changes. This resistance entails reluctance by theorists to address a novel phenomenon, as well as axiomatic impediments that lie in the hard core of the realist research program. The mechanism of “monster-adjustment,” discussed by Imre Lakatos, is offered as a way in which realism can extend its scope beyond centralized territorial states. This process subjects the underspecified assumption of the necessity of unit isomorphism in international systems to increased scrutiny, offering a way to extend the explanatory capacity of realist frameworks. With realism released from these constraints, opportunities for productive engagements with other paradigms may be realized.