Hegemonic order, September 11, and the consequences of the Bush revolution

The striking feature of contemporary world politics continuesto be the disproportionate power position of the United States.U.S. officials consider stability in East Asia to be of vitalimportance, and they have adopted a hegemonic strategy to promoteregional order and serve U.S. interests. U.S. officials arelikely to find the management and completion of hegemony moreproblematic in the years ahead. U.S. power, particularly military,will remain unchallenged. But changes in U.S. foreign policyafter September 11, developments in the world economy, and developmentsin East Asia suggest that the exercise of U.S. power and U.S.relations with states in this all-important region will becomeincreasingly complex and will demand more creative diplomaticefforts.     

Balance of Power Politics and the Rise of China: Accommodation and Balancing in East Asia

Realists agree that great powers balance the military power of rising powers, but there is little agreement regarding secondary-state responses to rising powers. First, there are differences regarding whether secondary states balance or accommodate rising powers. Second, there are differences among realists regarding the distinct roles of economic and military factors in secondary-state alignment policies. Third, some scholars argue that state alignments are not necessarily determined by realist variables, but can reflect preferences shaped by intentions, historical experiences, or cultural influences. This paper addresses these issues in balance-of-power theory. Its empirical focus is the impact of the rise of China on secondary-state alignments in East Asia. After examining the complex mix of China's military and economic reach in East Asia, it concludes that secondary-state behavior is sensitive to local variation in the great power capabilities and that secondary states tend to accommodate rather than balance rising powers. It further concludes that economic capabilities alone are insufficient to generate accommodation, so that the political-economy literature should reexamine cases of apparent secondary-state accommodation to economic dependency, sensitive to the presence of military vulnerability on the part these secondary states to proximate great powers. These conclusions suggest that there is nothing sui generis or culturally-determined in East Asian international politics and that realism can explain alignment behavior among East Asian states as well as it does among European states. Research on East Asia's response to China's rise that is sensitive to intra-regional variations in U.S. and Chinese military and economic capabilities also challenges assumptions of an emerging Chinese regional hegemony or of a costly region-wide U.S.-China competition.     

Leaders,Tenure, and the Politics of Sovereign Credit

Sovereign creditworthiness is as much a function of politics as economic fundamentals. Previous research has focused on the relationship between creditworthiness and political factors such as regime type, regional effects, and international organization membership. These factors, while important, often change slowly and do not always capture the more dynamic political determinants of creditworthiness. As an alternative, this study focuses on the role of leaders. We argue that leaders’ tenure reduces uncertainty in the sovereign credit market. Time in power allows leaders to better manage expectations related to sovereign credit policy of both domestic supporters and market actors. As a result, we expect that creditworthiness improves as a leader’s tenure increases. We find supporting evidence for our argument using two distinct empirical approaches: panel data analysis and a natural experiment. Our findings provide a better understanding of the relationship between leaders, politics, and sovereign credit.     

Contestation and resistance: the politics of and around transitional justice in Nepal

The shift to adopting holistic approaches in transitional justice indicates an intention to pay (greater) attention to politics in transitional justice. However, transitional justice actors frequently encounter difficulties in doing so, misread politics and misconstrue where to locate it in post-conflict contexts. Using research from Nepal I argue that there is considerable political activity taking place that challenges transitional justice on multiple scales. This research demonstrates that actors frequently seek to advance their interests and make claims utilising the process, institutions and language of transitional justice. In particular, I draw upon resistance literature and contentious politics literature to elucidate the complex relationships and interactions at the local and national level, which are often omitted from discussions about transitional justice in Nepal. Accordingly, I argue it is more useful to consider actors’ actions in relation to transitional justice on a continuum where there is co-option, resistance, contestation and compliance with a wide range of variation within each.     

Patterns of Internet and Traditional News Media Use in a Networked Community

Abstract

International communication has come increasingly under the impact of at least three major technological, socio‐economic, and political forces: expanded channels of communication provided by technological developments, democratizing pressures that have brought new voices to be heard in international media and forums, and new but as yet weak mechanisms for the conduct of meaningful dialogue and negotiations. Power politics has been thus increasingly supplemented or supplanted by image politics, questioning traditional boundaries between domestic and international politics, and creating image fixations that have proved occasionally inimical to accommodation of real interests. The symbolic uses of images, on the other hand, have served at least three kinds of cognitive interests: national solidarity, and domestic instrumental and global community. The Iranian hostage crisis, among a number of other contemporary examples, illustrates how these interests were served, symbolically and actually, in domestic as well as international politics. Through a case study of the hostage crisis, me paper concludes with some warnings on the potentials as well as menaces of image politics.     

Dealing with populists in government: a framework for analysis

There is growing research on populist actors and their impact on the democratic system, but little has been written on how to deal with populist actors in government. To respond to this question, in this article we develop a theoretical framework that distinguishes three levels of analysis. First, we identify the set of domestic and external actors that can try to cope with the coming into power of populist forces. Second, we offer an overview of the different strategies that can be employed to react against populist actors in government. Third, we argue that it is important to consider the timing of the reactions. In addition, we also present a brief summary of the articles that are part of this special issue.     

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.     

Command of the Sea with Chinese Characteristics

As globalization accelerates, U.S. foreign policy makers have become less convinced of the influence geopolitics and power politics have on international affairs. They now risk losing touch with rising competitors like China that continue to view the international system in geopolitical terms. Chinese geopolitical strategists have great influence with the country's defense policy makers, who are focusing increasingly on the need for China to establish command of the seas—a goal that threatens conflict between it and the United States throughout Asia. In order to prevent a return to a world dominated by aggressive, geopolitically driven actors, the United States cannot afford to assume that China shares its worldview and that geopolitics has disappeared from international relations.     

金融危机与美国霸权战略的调整

战后以来,强大经济实力始终是美国霸权政治的基础,金融则扮演了美国经济"晴雨表"的角色。2007年后的金融危机和债务危机削弱了美国霸权的经济"实力",使美国霸权战略不得不进行一系列调整:在经济领域,奥巴马政府实施了经济优先战略,推动美国霸权战略的"国内化"转向,力图夯实美国在世界政治经济格局中的霸主基础;在国际政治领域,加速推进"转型外交"进程,倡导多边主义和国际协作;在军事领域,采取相对收缩的军事战略,适时调整海外军事布局,全力应对国际金融危机。     

A Means of First Resort: Explaining “Hot Pursuit” in International Relations

This article provides a new theory of hot pursuit—the use of military force by a state against a nonstate actor across borders—in international relations. Drawing from the literature on civil-military relations, I argue that attitudes on limited use of force in peripheral areas will vary between civilian and military, with the latter preferring to treat hot pursuit as a policing operation, whereas the former will treat it as a military one. The logic of my argument is that militaries are oriented structurally and culturally to fight conventionally and against state near-peer adversaries. Threats emanating from nonstate actors, while at times perceived to be existential, require “pin-prick”-style targeted airstrikes, raids by commando forces, or policing operations along a state's periphery. I draw on an original dataset of “hot pursuit” (1975–2009) I collected and examine two recent case studies: India's hot pursuit of ethnic militants into Myanmar and Turkey's pursuit of Kurdish militants into Iraq and Syria.     

Transnational advocacy and domestic law: International NGOs and the design of freedom of information laws

Can international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) influence domestic policy? This paper offers new quantitative evidence of the impact of INGOs in one specific policy area—Freedom of Information (FOI) laws—as well as highlighting an under-studied mechanism of INGO influence on the design of domestic laws. I test this argument by examining the effect of legal analyses of draft FOI legislation published by the INGO Article 19. These analyses provide expert legal assessments and make normative evaluations—both information politics and symbolic politics. I find that in countries in which Article 19 conducted legal analyses, the design of the subsequently passed FOI laws was significantly stronger than in countries that were not subject to such analyses. I demonstrate that this finding is not an artifact of Article 19’s selection process. I also present suggestive evidence that highlights symbolic politics, not information politics, as the more salient mechanism. Finally, I examine the process of FOI drafting and adoption in Serbia to illustrate the argument and specific mechanisms at work.     

Two-Level Negotiations and U.S. Foreign Policy: The Failure of the Johnson Plan for the Palestinian Refugees, 1961-1962

The Kennedy administration sought to resolve the Palestine refugee problem in 1961-62 with a plan for compensation, resettlement, or repatriation under the formal auspices of the United Nations Palestine Conciliation Commission and negotiated by UN special envoy Dr. Joseph Johnson. The negotiations failed and the plan was canceled by the administration in December 1962. The article utilizes a multi-level conceptual model which examines the links between interstate negotiation, domestic politics and boundary-crossing interactions between foreign states and non-state domestic actors and their impact on foreign policy. It analyzes the multi-level negotiations that were conducted between representatives of the governments of Israel and the United States regarding the Johnson proposals, discussions held between Israel representatives and American Jewish leaders and prominent Jewish individuals, and between American government representatives and these same Jewish leaders and individuals. The study analyzes the factors that contributed to the failure of the plan and illustrates the nexus between foreign policy and domestic politics and the role of non-state actors in foreign policy decision making.     

US foreign policy,public memory,and autism: representing September 11 and May 4

In this article, we examine the social production of autism in US foreign policy discourse. Autism, we argue, is evident in the active forgetting of US foreign policy and its consequences, both in the US and abroad. It is this forgetting, promoted by the US state, that enabled many Americans to respond to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon with the question ‘Why do they hate us?’ The explanation for the social production of an autistic attitude in US foreign policy, we argue, lies in the relations between institutional power and competing narratives and articulations of US foreign policy and domestic politics. The argument is illustrated through analysis of the politics of public memory at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, where, on May 4, 1970, 13 students were shot, four fatally, while protesting the US invasion of Cambodia.     

Assessing violent nonstate actorness in global politics: a framework for analysis

This article begins with the assumption that the most important shift that is taking place in contemporary global politics is the shift in polity power from the predominance of the state to the rising importance of nonstate actors. It goes on to argue that disciplinary understandings of this shift and, in particular, the nature of the actors driving it, remain dispersed. This article aims, therefore, to provide a framework for evaluating the global political potential—or actorness—of one type of nonstate actor, the violent nonstate actor, positing it as that most overtly challenging states' authority, and therefore with the potential to play a uniquely stimulating role in the shifting of power. Based on three principles of autonomy, representation and influence, the framework provides broad criteria for understanding violent nonstate actors, as well as a means for evaluating violent nonstate actorness and for exploring its potential in global politics.     

Injustice and the New World Order: an anthropological perspective on “terrorism” in India

This article presents biographies of three activists of the Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Following 9/11, the Indian state banned SIMI for fomenting “terrorism”, “sedition” and “destroying Indian nationalism”. Of the three SIMI activists, Qasim Omar had spent 30 months in prison and Samin Patel, a US citizen of Indian origin, 27 months. Both these prominent SIMI leaders were charged with denigrating the photo of India’s flag and making provocative speeches. I interviewed them after their release. The third was an ordinary (non-office bearer) activist. Drawing on their biographies, I argue that Islamist radicalism or “terrorism” should be construed politically. Contrary to the prevalent politics, the pivot of which is bare rationality of profit and loss and ruthless pursuit of national interests, the kind of politics SIMI actors enact is best understood as a profound act of ethics manifest in the quest for justice. As such, they are not enemies of freedom, democracy and human rights; on the contrary, activists such as those in SIMI strive to rescue freedom and human rights from being monopolised and molested by the mighty few and thereby truly universalise them. Against methodological nationalism, I take the post-World War II global order as the human condition in which to situate the radical politics of these young SIMI activists.     

Deconstructing the Multiple Readings of a Terrorist Event in Turkey: The Case of the Council of State (Danıştay) Assault of 2006

Terrorism is a pivotal matter in Turkish politics. In this article, a specific terrorist activity, which is still having an impact upon Turkish politics, has been analyzed. It scrutinizes two perspectives of the event. Some actors lean towards a secular/positivist reading of events while others favour a conservative/postmodern reading. This serious factional political debate is possibly just the result that the terrorists had in mind. Being imbued by republican principles, the seculars' claims compel the conservatives to raise defensive points since they are blamed for murdering secular figures and targeting the very essence of the republic. Using different symbolic readings, both sides arrive at opposing conclusions: for the seculars the aim/message of the terror is clear—it is the republic; for the conservatives the aim/message is hidden—destabilizing the country.     

Elections and political change in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina

This article examines attempts to use electoral politics to promote substantive political change in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since 1990 elections have been a key part of virtually all negotiated agreements to end civil wars. The utility of democracy for building peace is often asserted but rarely backed with long-term commitment and resources on the ground. Bosnia since 1996 is a rare exception. There, international actors sought not only to establish a democratic political system but to use electoral democracy as a tool with which to transform the nature of politics in Bosnia in short order. This article focuses on efforts to shape the development of political parties and the party system, assesses the degree to which it has succeeded and examines the broader implications of Bosnia's experience for other state-building efforts of its kind.     

The Intra-National Struggle to Define "US": External Involvement as a Two-Way Street

Three perspectives on the causes of communal conflict are visible in extant work: a focus on ancient hatreds, on leaders, or on the context that leaders "find" themselves in. Leaders therefore have all the power to mobilize people to fight (or not to) or leaders are driven by circumstantial opportunities or the primordial desires of the masses to resist peace or coexistence with historical enemies. Analysts who focus on leaders or context recognize that external actors affect internal conflicts, but little systematic research has explored the processes relating the domestic politics of nationalist mobilization to factors in the international arena. How does the international arena affect the competition among leaders? How do skillful leaders draw in external actors to lend credibility to their own views? This article asserts that leaders compete to frame identity and mission, and explores the degree to which international factors affect whose "definitions of the situation" are successful in precipitating mobilization shifts among potential followers. A unique finding of this longitudinal study of Northern Ireland is that the role played by international institutions and actors is affected by how domestic actors perceive, cultivate, and bring attention to the linkages between the two spheres.     

Two-Level Negotiations and U.S. Foreign Policy: The Failure of the Johnson Plan for the Palestinian Refugees, 1961–1962

The Kennedy administration sought to resolve the Palestine refugee problem in 1961–62 with a plan for compensation, resettlement, or repatriation under the formal auspices of the United Nations Palestine Conciliation Commission and negotiated by UN special envoy Dr. Joseph Johnson. The negotiations failed and the plan was canceled by the administration in December 1962. The article utilizes a multi-level conceptual model which examines the links between interstate negotiation, domestic politics and boundary-crossing interactions between foreign states and non-state domestic actors and their impact on foreign policy. It analyzes the multi-level negotiations that were conducted between representatives of the governments of Israel and the United States regarding the Johnson proposals, discussions held between Israel representatives and American Jewish leaders and prominent Jewish individuals, and between American government representatives and these same Jewish leaders and individuals. The study analyzes the factors that contributed to the failure of the plan and illustrates the nexus between foreign policy and domestic politics and the role of non-state actors in foreign policy decision making.