Regional power South Africa: Co-operative hegemony constrained by historical legacy

This article argues that regional powers can be distinguished by four pivotal criteria: claim to leadership, power resources, employment of foreign policy instruments, and acceptance of leadership. Applying these criteria to the South African case, the crucial significance of institutional foreign policy instruments for the power over policy outcomes at the regional and global level is demonstrated. But although Pretoria is ready to pay the costs of co-operative hegemony (capacity building for regional institutions and peacekeeping for instance), the regional acceptance of South African leadership is constrained by its historical legacy. Additionally Pretoria's foreign policy is based on ideational resources such as its reputation as an advocate of democracy and human rights and its paradigmatic behaviour as a ‘good global citizen’ with the according legitimacy. The Mbeki presidency was more successful in converting these resources into discursive instruments of interest-assertion in global, than in regional bargains. In effect the regional power's reformist south-oriented multilateralism is challenging some of the guiding principles of the current international system.     

技术市场竞争与美国的技术安全化选择

技术市场竞争正成为大国技术竞争中最复杂、最重要和最突出的表现形式。作为霸权国,美国有着以不对称权力优势干预技术市场、重塑技术产业链的政治惯性,市场竞争与权力优势是美国技术安全化的动力追求与能力支撑。美国将技术与安全议题相联结,不仅能够挣脱现有规则与制度的束缚、阻断竞争国既有的技术扩散趋势,还可以动员和捆绑其他国家共同行动,达到最大化控制他国市场选择、保有和扩张国家市场份额的目的。因此,无论是美日半导体技术之争,还是在中美5G技术之争中,当处于崛起状态的竞争国使美国倍感技术市场竞争压力时,美国都以技术安全化手段,在国家和全球的技术市场选择中不断渗透意识形态与安全逻辑,动态持续对目标国进行安全化的塑造与打击。作为当下美国技术安全化主要的目标国,中国需要以更灵活的技术策略应对美国的技术安全化陷阱,从市场拓展、自主创新、企业管理和话语权提升等多方面对美国可能采取的安全化市场打击与压缩的行为作出应对。     

The myth of German hegemony in the euro area revisited

Abstract

This paper contributes to the scholarly debate on hegemony and leadership in international relations and elaborates on an analytical framework to assess the nature, scope, functions and causal mechanisms of hegemonic and non-hegemonic leadership in general terms. Based on this framework, it takes issue with the interpretation of Germany’s role during the euro area crisis as being a hegemonic one. Discussing the concepts of hegemony, leadership and dominance, it argues that Germany proved dominant during the euro area crisis on selected issues, mainly using its veto power. On other issues, Berlin provided non-hegemonic leadership, more often than not asymmetric co-leadership shared with France. It did not play the role of a hegemon, however, lacking the resources and being unable to shape decisively the economic constitution of the euro area along the lines of its core preferences.     

Water privatization,hegemony and civil society: What Motivates Individuals to Protest About Water Privatization?

The article takes the case of protest against water privatization in Ireland to show that protestors with high levels of instrumental motivation as opposed to ideological motivation are more likely to protest. In order to explain this we uniquely combine Klandermans’ social psychology of protest with Gramsci’s theory of hegemony. By bridging these two bodies of theory, we provide an interdisciplinary account of the reason why protestors serve to uphold the exact power structures they intend to challenge. We argue that for water movements to be successful they must focus equally on both their instrumental and ideological motivations to ensure that power structures are confronted. This would enable movements to devise a coherent counter-hegemonic discourse, which is essential to contest the dominant global hegemony of water marketization.     

The Southern African unipolarity

Despite the tectonic changes that have taken place in Southern Africa since the demise of apartheid, South Africa is still widely considered a hegemonic regional power by scholars, practitioners and pundits. This article challenges this interpretation, asserting that both Pretoria’s foreign policy and that of its neighbours fit the concept of regional unipolarity with more precision. Since the early 1990s, South Africa has pursued leadership within binding regional institutions and invested resources in order to reinforce the sovereignty of second-tier states such as Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, which have in turn disputed its diplomatic and military primacy, achieving impressive results. This behaviour is characteristic of unipoles rather than hegemons. In this article I revisit the evolution of South African relations with its more proximate neighbours in a transition from hegemony (1961–1990) to unipolarity. I start by defining both concepts and clarifying the behaviours that regional powers and small states are expected to have under hegemonic and unipolar settings. Then, I examine inter-state relations in the region, showing that the concept of unipolarity best describes power distribution and best predicts foreign policy in Southern Africa since the 1990s. Finally, I show that this exercise in concept rectification illuminates comparisons with other regional unipoles, and provides a useful framework to forecast the consequences of an eventual Southern African bipolarity, if Angola continues to catch up.     

Electoral Risk and Redistributive Politics in Mexico and the United States

What strategy does a rational party follow in allocating discretionary expenditure? This article conceives redistributive politics as an investment strategy where expenditure allocations respond to electoral risk. To show the effects of risk, it provides evidence from Pronasol in Mexico and an analysis of New Deal spending in the United States. The analysis finds that the federal administrations in both countries responded to systematic electoral risk. Spending diversification into risky voters was a rational response to chances of losing elections. The analysis hence connects electoral volatility with redistributive spending.     

Self-Defense and the Use of Force: Breaking the Rules, Making the Rules, or Both?

This article examines shifts in international law regarding the use of force—the jus ad bellum —that emerged in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and subsequently were invoked in part by the United States and United Kingdom to justify military intervention in Iraq. These shifts import some elasticity—in time, space, and place—into the preexisting legal understanding of self-defense. To be sure, the general consensus that supported the use of force in Afghanistan as a legitimate exercise of self-defense has diluted as the use of that force expanded into other theaters of operation. It is therefore unsurprising that considerable controversy envelops claims by some states that international law entitles them to use force in self-defense in a preemptory manner. This article explores the articulation of this and other justifications for the military intervention in Iraq. It also unpacks the difficult question whether these entitlements are constitutive of inchoate legal rules or simply deviations from the still operational old rules. Moreover, this article encourages scholars and students of international law and relations to consider why a movement is afoot to change the rules and how this affects the architecture of collective security. To facilitate this process of reflection, this article explores the policy implications of retaining the old rules or adopting the newly alleged rules.     

Hearing Latin American Voices in International Relations Studies

This article offers a general account of international relations studies (IR) in Latin America through an examination of IR thinking in the region, an inventory of IR theory courses in seven Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Trinidad and Tobago), and an analysis of journal articles selected from five specialized IR journals in Latin America. Although considerable U.S. influence upon the ways in which IR is approached in Latin America is made apparent through this narrative, the specific context in which IR studies have evolved in the region has substantially altered the content of U.S. IR discourse. Therefore, the article concludes with a discussion of the possible contributions of Latin American IR to Anglo-American perspectives in the field.     

社会学语境下的精神控制及其对策

邪恶势力进行的精神控制可以被解构为四个基本部分:行为控制、信息控制、思维控制和情感控制。心理学对精神控制的分析只是技术层面的,探讨精神控制的实质必须从社会学视野入手。利用相关的文化理论与行动理论对精神控制进行考察,得出其本质是阻碍沟通理性与争夺文化霸权。因而预防和解除精神控制的途径必须从创设理想沟通情境与主流文化重建两方面着手。     

“熊通困境”：国际体系中的身份政治与安全两难

“熊通困境”是指国际体系中的崛起国家,因“异质身份”而面临现行国际体系强烈敌意、因实力相对增长而受到霸权国家及其附庸集团权势压制的双重难题。西周乃至春秋时期楚国的历史经验表明,由于特定国家与霸权国家及其附庸集团大不相同的国际政治身份,受到体系敌视、压制的状况,具有长期的国际政治效应。而此类国家实力增长及由此导致的权势对比变动,较一般崛起国家而言,往往将激发起现有体系内更为强大甚至远超常规的敌对性反应。崛起国家突破“熊通困境”存在两种方式与效应皆有所不同的路径：一是主要通过武力强制,力求最终颠覆现有国际体系,这意味着紧张局势的持续加剧乃至最终爆发大国间战争;二是致力于推动促进现有国际体系身份共识的瓦解,这意味着长期的、连贯的、灵活的、坚定的非军事与军事手段的战略组合运用。当前,在中国国家实力快速增长的背景下,霸权国家及其附庸集团对中国施加愈发强大压力的主要原因之一,便是美国等部分西方国家将中国视为与之“对立”的“他者”,并对这种国际政治身份存在根深蒂固的不信任乃至显著敌意。笃行和平与发展的当代中国,突破“熊通困境”的主要战略路径,在于逐步构建并推广新的国际体系“身份共识”,为此需要以改变他国意图和行为为目标,需要付出较长时间的努力、采取灵活的方式以及抱定锲而不舍之态度。