The discipline of international relations: still an American social science?

This article reviews the state of the discipline of international relations. It starts from statements made by the editors in their editorial published in the first issue of this journal. The editors noted that there seemed to have been less adherence to positivism in international relations than in other areas of political science and that there was both more opposition to positivism and more methodological and epistemological openness in international relations than in political science generally. The article outlines the current state of the field, focusing on the rationalist mainstream and then on the reflectivist alternatives, before looking at social constructivism, seeing it as the likely acceptable alternative to rationalism in the mainstream literature of the next decade. It then turns to examine whether international relations is still an American social science, before looking at the situation in the United Kingdom. It concludes that the editors' comments were indeed accurate, but that the fact that there is both more opposition to positivism in international relations and more openness in the UK academic community does not mean that the mainstream US literature is anything like as open or pluralist. The UK community is indeed more able to develop theory relevant to the globalised world at the new millennium, but the US academic community still dominates the discipline.     

New Labour: what's published is what counts

Books reviewed in this article:
Barrett-Brown, M. and Coates, K. (1996) The Blair Revelation: Deliverance for Whom?
Blackburn, R. and Plant, R. (eds) (1999) The Labour Government's Constitutional Reform Agenda.
Blair, T. (1996) New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country.
Brivati, B. and Bale, T. (eds) (1997) New Labour in Power: Precedents and Prospects.
Crewe, I., Gosschalk, B. and Bartle, J. (1998) Political Communications: Why Labour Won the General Election of 1997
Denver, D., Fisher, J., Cowley, P. and Pattie, C. (1998) British Elections and Parties Review, Volume 8: The 1997 General Election.
Driver, S. and Martell, L. (1998) New Labour: Politics after Thatcherism.
Ellison, N. (1994) Egalitarian Thought and Labour Politics: Retreating Visions.
Gamble, A. and Wright, T. (1999) The New Social Democracy.
Geddes, A. and Tonge, J. (eds) (1997) Labour's Landslide: The British General Election 1997.
Giddens, A. (1998) The Third Way: the Renewal of Social Democracy.
Hay, C. (1999) The Political Economy of New Labour: Labouring under False Pretences?
Hazell, R. (ed.) (1999) Constitutional Futures: A History of the Next Ten Years.
Jones, T. (1996) Remaking the Labour Party: From Gaitskell to Blair.
Shaw, E. (1996) The Labour Party Since 1945.
Taylor, G. (1997) Labour's Renewal? The Policy Review and Beyond.
Thompson, N. (1996) Political Economy and the Labour Party: The Economics of Democratic Socialism 1884–1995.
Worcester, R. and Mortimore, R. (1999) Explaining Labour's Landslide.     

Book Reviews

Mac and Supermac

Alistair Horne, Macmillan, 1894–1956 : Volume I of the Official Biography. (London: Macmillan, 1988. £16.95. ISBN 0 333 27691)

Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500–2000 (London and Sydney, 1988)

Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (Harvard University Press, 1987)

Henry Butterfield Ryan, The Vision of Anglo‐America: The US‐UK Alliance and the Emerging Cold War, 1943–1946 (Cambridge University Press, 1987)     

An interactive model of attitude and risk/benefit formation regarding social issues

Decision analysis has become an increasingly useful tool for aiding decisionmakers in dealing with complex public and private sector decisions involving multiple objectives and uncertainty. An outgrowth of this discipline is Risk Assessment, which in part concerns how citizen attitudes, risks, and benefits regarding social issues evolve. It is hypothesized that such attitudes and beliefs are determined interactively. A general simultaneous equation model is developed consistent with this hypothesis. A hybrid estimation model and the technique of ridge regression combined with two stage least squares are developed to estimate the model's parameters and tested using data from a psychometric survey of citizen attitudes and beliefs regarding contemporary socially sensitive issues. The results verify the validity of the model and technique. The utility of this model for the policy making process as well as future theoretical and applied research are discussed.     

Five years of the APEC Privacy Framework: Failure or promise?

The APEC Privacy Framework was developed from 2003, adopted by APEC in 2004 and finalised in 2005. It was intended as a means of improving the standard of information privacy protection throughout the APEC countries of the Asia–Pacific, and of facilitating the trans-border flow of personal information between those countries. In 2007 a number of ‘Pathfinder’ projects for cross-border data transfers were launched under the Framework. In the five years since the process commenced, what has it achieved, and what is it likely to achieve? This paper argues that the APEC Privacy Framework has had many flaws from its inception, including Privacy Principles that are unnecessarily weak, and no meaningful enforcement requirements. Since its adoption in 2004, little attempt has been made to encourage its use as a minimal standard for privacy legislation in developing countries (which might have been useful), and it is having little impact on the significant number of legislative developments now taking place.     

The Bush Doctrine: The Foreign Policy of Republican Empire

The dominant narrative concerning the Bush Doctrine maintains that it is a dangerous innovation, an anomaly that violates the principles of sound policy as articulated by the Founders. According to the conventional wisdom, the Bush Doctrine represents the exploitation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, by a small group of ideologues—the “neoconservatives”—to gain control of national policy and lead the United States into the war in Iraq, a war that should never have been fought. But far from a being a neoconservative innovation, the Bush Doctrine is, in fact, well within the mainstream of U.S. foreign policy and very much in keeping with the vision of America's founding generation and the practice of the statesmen in the Early Republic. The Bush Doctrine is only the latest manifestation of the fact that U.S. national interest has always been concerned with more than simple security.     

The Muslim Brotherhood and the Emerging ‘Shia Crescent’

To form a more prudent foreign policy toward the Muslim Brotherhood, we must understand it not only as a domestic actor, but also as a major regional player. In fact, the Brotherhood has a complex relationship with Iran and the Shias, which blurs the lines of the so-called Shia Crescent. This article addresses the Muslim Brotherhood's foreign/regional policy by analyzing its attitude toward the Shias and Iran, thus placing it within the context of the emerging regional order. Addressing the complex relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Shias/Iran will help to clarify the regional fallout were the Brotherhood to gain control of a major Sunni Arab state. This is a vital issue for policy makers who are considering the U.S. position vis-à-vis the Brotherhood.     

Counterinsurgency Principles for the Diplomat

The recent resurgence of interest in insurgency and counterinsurgency has revealed a deficit in material written by and for the diplomat, the actor ostensibly responsible for the political component of a counterinsurgency campaign. Classical theorists stress that progress along the political track is essential for ultimate success. Recent commentary, in shedding new light on the characteristics of modern insurgencies, reaffirms this principle. To make political headway the diplomat-counterinsurgent needs to develop a strategic narrative, build a political strategy around the narrative, acquire expertise, become a catalyst for political change, and maximize contact with the local population. In doing so, he will make important contributions to and help accelerate success in a counterinsurgency campaign.

“War and diplomacy are different but intimately related aspects of national policy. Diplomats and warriors who recall this will therefore act as brothers in a potentially lethal common endeavor.…they will consider together when to fight and when to talk and when to press and when to stop.”

Chas. W. Freeman, Jr., The Diplomat's Dictionary (1995)

Full-size table