Diplomatic imaginations: mediating estrangement in world society

This article is an inquiry into the relationship between diplomacy and public imagination in world politics. Neither the conventional conceptions of diplomacy as the art or practice of negotiations among groups or states, nor more critical meditations on the mediation of conflictual narratives, it is argued, can adequately explain the very subjective foundations of diplomacy as a normative practice in world politics. This glaring oversight is in large part due to the lack of engagement with the varied contours of historical meaning and memory that condition human thoughts and relations in world society. Diplomacy, I argue, is very much implicated in the normative dictates of public imagination: namely, the public understanding of history which arises from the exclusionary—and hence often conflicting—cultural narratives about nationhood, justice, language, rights, personhood, et cetera that remain the perennial facts of human relations in world society. As such, the practice of diplomacy can be reconceived as a paradox: an intervention into, and an enabler of, exclusivist narrations of public imagination in world society.     

Singing Our World into Existence: International Relations Theory and September 11

This paper focuses on the relationship between International Relations theory and ethics. It poses the question of the complicity of the discipline in the events of September 11, 2001. The paper begins with a discussion of Weber's notion of science as a vocation, and links this to the commitment in the discipline to a value-free conception of social science, one that sharply separates facts from values. The paper then examines the role of ten core assumptions in International Relations theory in helping to construct a discipline that has a culturally and historically very specific notion of violence, one resting on distinctions between economics and politics, between the outside and the inside of states, and between the public and the private realms. Using the United Nations Human Development report, the paper summarizes a number of forms of violence in world politics, and questions why the discipline of International Relations only focuses on a small subset of these. The paper then refers to the art of Magritte, and specifically Velazquez's painting Las Meninas, to argue for a notion of representation relevant to the social world that stresses negotiation, perspective, and understanding rather than notions of an underlying Archimedean foundation to truth claims. In concluding, the paper asserts that the discipline helped to sing into existence the world of September 11 by reflecting the interests of the dominant in what were presented as being neutral, and universal theories.     

World politics and social movements: the Janus face of the global democratic structure

This article advances a theoretically informed understanding of the relationship between world politics, democracy and social movements. The pivot of the discussion is the concept of a global democratic structure. The global democratic structure is rooted in changes taking place after the end of the Second World War, but has become globally dominant only after the end of the Cold War. The global democratic structure is undergirded by powerful political, security and economic interests. At the same time, however, it provides opportunities for social critique and change. This potential is exemplified through a discussion of the role of social movements in world politics. Social movements are influential through discursive means. The article offers a number of propositions about the conditions for social movement success and failure in the global democratic structure.     

Global Cities,International Relations and the Fabrication of the World

The global city presents one available model for understanding urbanisation and associated hierarchies of power. In International Relations (IR), the global city is treated as a unit in a new type of international system, an increasingly important actor in world politics, or a site through which global processes operate. This article forwards an alternative perspective. It treats the global city as a dispositif of power. While the global city captures the fact that power and wealth are spatially concentrated in today’s urbanising world politics, the concept also has a world-making capacity. The article analyses this capacity in two contexts. Firstly, it presents a genealogy of the voyage of the global cities concept from critical academic scholarship to a buzzword of city elites and business consultants. Secondly, it performs a governmental analysis of global city reports and indexes. Finally, the article suggests that conceptualising the global city as a dispositif enables the important task of imagining alternative ways of framing the meaning of urbanisation in world politics.     

缅甸政局中的地缘政治因素

一个国家或地区的地缘政治地位和地缘安全地位与作用在很大程度上是由该国家或地区的地缘要素决定的。不同时期的政治学家和学者基于不同的世界经济与政治条件以及不同的历史视角，形成了各自不同的地缘政治理论。虽然这些地缘政治理论大多来自于大国，也大多成为大国谋求世界霸权的理论依据与参考.     

The reputations of NGOs: Peer evaluations of effectiveness

This article explores the reputations of transnational non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their determinants. Although the concept of reputation has received extensive treatment in international relations, NGO reputation has received less attention. Yet reputations are critical to the construction of NGO authority and to patterns of collaboration. We develop a framework for studying NGO reputation. We then provide empirical evidence on the construction of a particular dimension of NGO reputation, that of organizational effectiveness from the perspective of NGO peers. Based on a mixed-method, in-depth interview study of transnational NGO leaders, we identify specific factors associated with NGOs’ effectiveness reputations among their peers. Larger, older, more highly visible organizations, organizations adopting hybrid strategies, and organizations headquartered outside of Washington, DC enjoy higher reputations for organizational effectiveness. Our analysis provides context for understanding the influence of transnational NGOs in world affairs and offers insight into the role of reputation in global politics more generally.     

Federal Calculations in State Level Coalition Governments

When political parties organize, compete and maintain interests at different levels, they bring interconnections both between as well as horizontally across levels. This study suggests that the autonomy of state politics formulation may have to pay greater attention to the federal framework and give more consideration to the role of polity-wide parties. This study uses the autonomy thesis as a heuristic tool and expands the discussion beyond state politics as considered by Yogendra Yadav-Suhas Palshikar. It examines the interface between the rise of the state as the primary unit and the functioning of political parties, especially in a multi-party competitive scenario where parties are forced to enter into coalitions. By situating India and its coalition experiences within a broader literature of comparative politics, the study tries to enrich our understanding about the relationship between federalism, political parties and coalition politics.     

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.     

The Psychological and Behavioural Bases of Islamic Fundamentalism

This article explores psychological and behavioural issues that may help our understanding of some important contemporary developments in Islam. The particular areas of immediate concern are the behavioural bases of the relationship between Islamic fundamentalism and violence. A more general issue, however, relates to how we might understand the nature of religious and ideological control over behaviour. At the outset, general issues related to the concept of fundamentalism will be discussed. This is a very contentious term, and in some circumstances might be thought to refer more to the perspective of the beholder than that of the believer. Subsequently, the concept of fundamentalism within the context of Islam will be considered, emphasizing the nature of fundamentalist ideology, while ways of understanding the processes of fundamentalism within a behavioural framework will be described. The broader implications of this discussion will then be extended with particular reference to religious control over behaviour.     

Green Politics, Green and Orange Diplomacy: Lyndon Johnson and Eamon de Valera's Farewell Tour of the United States

Ireland had significant pull in domestic American politics, but was a minor power in world affairs. The Irish influence was inverse to the relationship the United States had with the United Kingdom. In 1964, these political and diplomatic factors converged when Eamon de Valera, the American born President of the Republic of Ireland, made one last tour of the United States. Lyndon Johnson used the trip to his political advantage without harming the relationship the United States enjoyed with the United Kingdom. Johnson showed a skillful touch in both the diplomacy and politics that went along with this visit, challenging dominant views about his competence in this area.     

Green Politics,Green and Orange Diplomacy: Lyndon Johnson and Eamon de Valera's Farewell Tour of the United States

Ireland had significant pull in domestic American politics, but was a minor power in world affairs. The Irish influence was inverse to the relationship the United States had with the United Kingdom. In 1964, these political and diplomatic factors converged when Eamon de Valera, the American born President of the Republic of Ireland, made one last tour of the United States. Lyndon Johnson used the trip to his political advantage without harming the relationship the United States enjoyed with the United Kingdom. Johnson showed a skillful touch in both the diplomacy and politics that went along with this visit, challenging dominant views about his competence in this area.     

Presidential Agenda-Setting of Traditional and Nontraditional News Media

The president’s ability to influence the news agenda is central to the study of American politics. Although there is a large literature that examines presidential agenda-setting vis-à-vis traditional news sources, such as newspapers or broadcast television networks, there is little research that explores the effects of presidential agenda leadership of nontraditional media whether online or cable television. This study remedies this state of affairs by examining the relationship between the president’s daily agenda and traditional and nontraditional daily news agendas. I argue that although the president should find similar space on all news for topics he raises in his speeches, nontraditional sources are more likely to cover other stories that reference the president. Analysis of 748 stories on the presidency for 63 days in early 2012 from 7 traditional, cable, and online news sources provides support for my argument, with cable news providing the most presidential news coverage. I conclude with some implications about what my findings mean for presidential leadership of nontraditional media.     

The UN factor in the “regional power role” and the Turkish case in the 2000s

This article aims to explore the relationship between regional powers and the United Nations (UN) with respect to regional issues by examining UN-Turkish ties concerning the Middle East during the 2000s. Bidding for a leading regional role in the Middle East, especially in the 2000s, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government in Turkey has increasingly used international platforms, including the UN, to gain a significant regional position in the Middle East. Turkey’s relationship with the UN in this respect could provide a relevant example to explore multilateralism and multilateral instruments in Turkey’s perceived regional power role during the last decade. The term “regional power” will be used as a conceptual framework to explore Turkey’s behavioural pattern with respect to the UN in view of the regional-global linkage, as global activism is nearly a standard behaviour of any state with a leading regional power role/claim. In view of this, the period during which Turkey held a temporary seat on the UN Security Council between 2009 and 2010 will be given particular attention in order to identify any significant link or at least any tentative correlations between Turkey’s then-closer involvement in the UN and its regional power role/claim in the Middle East. Moreover, fluctuations recorded in Turkey’s relations with the UN with respect to the Middle East during the last decade will be taken into account to examine a variety of challenges involved in any regional state’s relations with the UN regarding regional issues. Conducting a periodical analysis of Turkey-UN relations with respect to the Middle East could provide some provisional answers regarding both limitations and opportunities related to the future state of relations between any regional power and the most universal organization of world politics.     

Engaging with the post-secular moment in post-9/11 Afghanistan: the search for a ‘humanist’ political discourse

9/11 and the subsequent war on terror in Afghanistan have severely challenged the idea of a world politics based on secular modernity. While the post-9/11 Afghan society remains troubled with the post-secular conflict between the so-called Islamic-terrorist and secular-democratic forces, the need for a ‘humanist’ political discourse that could pave the way for peace has become paramount. This paper explores the viability of ‘post-Islamism’ as an alternative humanist political discourse. It sets out to demonstrate how a post-Islamic humanist discourse, which is defined by the dialogic process of developing a hermeneutical understanding of Islamic philosophy, has the potential to not only carve the way for peace amidst perilous entanglement between politics and religion in post-secular Afghanistan, but also vindicate Islam of its unjustified denigration in the contemporary world.     

Sport and Diplomacy: A Global Diplomacy Framework

ABSTRACT

The actors, or “players,” involved in the transactions of diplomacy occasioned by sport are manifold. In the case of the world’s “global game”—association football—they include but are not limited to individual footballers, football clubs, national leagues, national associations, football’s international governance structures, multi-national sponsors, and numerous hangers on. Importantly for this analysis, such a panoply of actors creates an architecture, replicated across other sports, which speak to the necessity of furthering the understanding of the relationship between sport and diplomacy. These two phenomena share a long-standing similarity in global affairs; both having been over-looked as means of comprehending relations between different polities otherwise centred on the nation-state. This exegesis advances our understanding in two areas. First, it addresses the parameters of the discussion of “sport and diplomacy” and problematises the discourse between the two with a note on language; and second, it utilises a framework provided by an appreciation of “global diplomacy” to explore concepts of communication, representation, and negotiation in sport and diplomacy.     

“安全与发展”:巴西的地缘政治思想(二战结束至20世纪80年代)

二战结束后巴西地缘政治研究的重点是巴西的地缘政治形态、国内治理、国际关系、对外战略等问题,实现国家的"安全与发展"是巴西地缘政治研究的目标和口号。这种研究通过鼓吹加强领土控制、促进国内治理、主导地区形势来实现大国抱负,具有浓厚的意识形态色彩。巴西地缘政治研究的思想基础源自经典地缘政治的观点与逻辑,具有强烈的进攻性和强权政治色彩,但巴西学者对缩小国内的地区差异、促进国内经济社会发展的思考有其独到之处。在建设一个"强大的经济和稳定的国家"的口号下,巴西地缘政治学者高度关注巴西国内经济和社会发展对巴西的重在意义。戈尔贝里把使本国经济现代化和完成巴西的地缘政治目标视为一种相辅相成的关系。地缘政治思想对二战结束后至20世纪80年代巴西的内外政策产生了广泛影响,并成为1964年军政权上台后巴西国家意识形态的支柱之一,在巴西国家大战略的制订过程中发挥了重要作用。在具体实践过程中,巴西地缘政治思想提供的诸多政策手段不仅没有取得预期效果,而且加剧了地区的紧张形势。     

Transnational Dialogue in an Age of Terror

11 September led many people to dismiss the prospects for a meaningful dialogue between Islam and the West. This article argues that the terrorist attacks against the United States also created the potential for a new kind of dialogue by initiating a virtually unprecedented issue-specific global public sphere focused on the question of the relations between Islam and the West. It draws on Habermas to consider the potential for dialogue under contemporary conditions. By examining the constructivist foundations of both Islamist and neoconservative approaches to international politics, this article posits both a demand for and an important potential supply for a meaningful dialogue. In particular, it discusses the intense and important public arguments within the Islamic world about the concept of dialogue and its political possibilities. It focuses upon the internal arguments between moderates and extremists on both sides, and considers how dialogue (or its absence) can change the terms of the interaction by breaking the monopoly over representation claimed by – and too often granted to – radicals.     

International representations of Balkan wars: a socio-anthropological approach in international relations perspective

This article introduces the socio-anthropological concept of international representations to examine the relationship between a civilizational rhetoric, the West European and the international politics of otherization and containment of Southeast Europe, and an essentialist and timeless bias in international relations theory, including both radical and constructivist trends. We first explore the different narrative perspectives on the Balkan wars from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century. Their subsequent problematization is aimed at challenging the way they have constructed commonplace and time-worn representations, which international society shares with different consequences in international affairs. This is a limited conception since international representations as a socio-anthropological concept are always socially, culturally and politically constructed, contested and negotiated. They do not neutrally refer to a reality in the world; they create a reality of their own. Moreover, this limited conception ignores the fact that how, by whom and in whose interest international representations are constructed is itself a form of power in international relations. Therefore, the way international representations are constructed can be problematized as an example of political and ideological projects that operate in the West as well as in the Southeast European countries that are the object of Western foreign policy.     

Books

This paper deals with the relationship between communication, politics and warfare. Communication is frequently regarded as the solution to all problems and it is often said we only need to communicate more to prevent conflict. The aim is to give an overview of opinions to indicate that communication is used not only as an instrument for seeking peace, but also as an offensive (and defensive) instrument in politics and warfare; also that politics without communication cannot exist and that politics and warfare are closely related. Clausewitz's dictum that warfare is the continuation of politics through other means has been extended by Communism to mean that peace is the continuation of war. Only if the reciprocal relationship between communication, politics and warfare is taken into consideration, can communication be used as an instrument to provide peace in the age of the delicate balance of nuclear terror and international terrorism.     

World society,international society and the colonization of Africa

This article utilizes an English School approach to examine the European colonization of Africa between 1871 and 1908. Drawing upon Clark's framework for understanding the relationship between world society, international society and international institutions, it argues that the colonization of Africa was very much dependent upon the activity of non-state actors who essentially pushed European states into the formal colonization of the African interior. Such a case sheds important light on the destructive role world society has played in international politics, a topic which has received no attention in the English School literature. Moreover the study provides additional empirical insights into the relationship between world society, international society and international institutions, while also bringing much needed empirical discussion of colonization into the English School catalogue.