Virtue Unrestrained: Herbert Butterfield and the Problem of American Power

In the late 1950s, the British historian Sir Herbert Butterfield observed that we should not welcome the prospect of even a virtuous hegemon but should seek, rather, a balance of power. He did so because his understanding of history suggested that aspirant hegemons succeed principally in precipitating costly wars against them, while his sense of Christian ethics suggested that even a successful virtuous hegemon would become self-righteous and, by imposing its values on others, would curtail the scope of human freedom. I argue that current United States (U.S.) policy and the world's response to it to date confirm Butterfield's position, but that this presents a new set of practical and moral questions centered on the problem of advocating a balance against a country that one regards as broadly virtuous, and certainly more virtuous than many of the other powers in the world, but that no longer wants to pursue its interests through the post-Cold War concert of putative great powers. The best answer to these problems, I conclude, lies not in a crude balance, but the re-institutionalization of the idea of the balance of power. This requires advocating restraint and self-restraint, the first practical manifestation of which being that the U.S. should not attack either of the surviving members of the "Axis of Evil."     

Jewish-Palestinian Relations in Israel: From Hegemony to Equality?

This article focuses on the relationships between the Jewish majority and the Palestinian minority in Israel. Opening with a historical perspective that emphasizes the marginality of the minority, the article proceeds to describe empirically that minority's inferior and subservient condition. The third section proposes an elaborate conceptual framework for analyzing politics in deeply divided societies and then applies it to the Israeli case. The final part addresses the possibility of transforming Israel's political system from one that is ethnically hegemonic and democratically flawed into a polity that is open, inclusive, and genuinely democratic. The article identifies ways for effecting such a systemic transformation through individual-based approaches (especially liberal democracy) and group-based designs (consociationalism, multinationalism, federalism, cantonization, and autonomy).     

美国“长臂管辖”与中美经贸摩擦

在全球化时代,国际经贸领域的域外管辖权问题进一步凸显。作为回应,美国采取了滥用域外管辖权、单方面依据国内法强行管辖他国机构或公民的政策,这种行为被称为长臂管辖。长臂管辖的形成和发展与美国霸权护持战略密切相关,是美国在国际经贸领域压制竞争对手的重要工具。美国立法、司法与行政执法部门依靠本国综合实力与政治理据,相互协作,建立了一整套完备的长臂管辖机制。特朗普政府上台以来,视中国为霸权挑战者,挑起中美经贸摩擦。为了达到遏制中国发展的目的,美国在贸易与科技领域对中国实施了严厉的长臂管辖。这些长臂管辖存在严重的程序公正与透明度等问题,极大地损害了中国的国家利益,也加剧了中美战略竞争。从推动全球治理秩序改革发展的大局出发,中国必须坚决反对美国以霸权推行长臂管辖、以长臂管辖护持霸权的错误行为。     

“东北亚区域秩序研究”笔谈

进入21世纪,东北亚国际关系波谲云诡,成为全球地缘政治的热点。如何透过纷繁复杂的现象,探寻东北亚区域秩序变迁的历史轨迹,三篇文章试图从不同的视角回答这一问题。"从帝国到霸权:东北亚区域秩序的现代转型"以帝国与霸权为切入点,解读了两者在东北亚区域秩序的形成及转型过程中发挥的作用;"后冷战时代东北亚的民族主义与区域秩序"从民族主义入手,探讨了东北亚各国民族主义对塑造东亚均势秩序的影响,以及走向法理秩序的可能;"中华帝国转型与东北亚区域形成"回溯近代以来中华帝国与区域世界的互动,中国从农业帝国向现代主权国家的转变是东北亚区域形成的核心动力所在。     

Free trade agreements and “economic territory” as a geoeconomic imaginary in South Korea

Since the early 2000s, the discourse of “economic territory” has surfaced in conjunction with economic neoliberalization in South Korea. This paper argues that economic territory as a geoeconomic imaginary not only facilitated the expansion of free trade agreements as an accumulation strategy but also served as a hegemonic project which masked the nature of an accumulation strategy as a class project and consolidated political legitimacy by manipulating nationalism. To examine this linkage, it critically draws upon the idea of cultural political economy (CPE) developed by Lancaster-based sociologists Bob Jessop and Ngai-Ling Sum. This paper offers a fresh and more substantial interpretation of South Korea’s political economy and opens up new analytical space for CPE.     

THE RENAISSANCE FACTOR IN SOUTH AFRICA AND THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF AFRICAN REGIONAL GOVERNANCE (1999-2008)

ABSTRACT

This article examines a likely South African hegemony in Africa between 1999 and 2008. Hegemony is admittedly difficult to define in African regionalism studies, as it is counter intuitive to Pan-Africanism discourse. However, this article aims to show that hegemony can be a credible argument in explaining the South African driven changes that occurred in African regionalism between 1999 and 2008. The article locates key characteristics which underpin arguments of South African hegemony during the study timeline. It argues that Thabo Mbeki's governance philosophy of African renaissance was the central piece of South African Africa foreign policy that distinguishes this period from any other before or after it. By establishing hegemonic credibility in South Africa's interaction with Africa in this period, the article demonstrates how South Africa was able to contribute to transformational governance changes in Africa. This also holds lessons for South African regional ascendancy in the future.     

Conflicting leadership paradigms in Africa: A need for an African Renaissance perspective1

ABSTRACT

This article looks at key elements of leadership paradigms in Africa. A timeline is drawn and Africa's contemporary leadership in the past 50 years is situated within three periods, each of which is anchored by an event(s) that shifted the continent's political and/or intellectual and theoretical landscape. Juxtaposed against these periods is traditional leadership and its cross-cutting role in governance in Africa. Current manifestations of crisis in the leadership paradigm are looked at, which draws the author to critique what he terms the matrix that produces the contemporary generation of leaders, and advocates for the incorporation of Africa's historical and cultural legacy as a cornerstone in new leadership paradigms, and places it within the context of an African Renaissance.     

The 2008 Russian–Georgian war via the lens of Offensive Realism

Abstract

The Russian intervention in Georgia's breakaway republic of South Ossetia in August 2008, Moscow's first-ever use of military force against a sovereign state in the post-cold war period, deserves a theoretical explanation. By following the tenets of Offensive Realism, this article will argue that the US–Russian competition in the South Caucasus is the main cause of the 2008 Russian–Georgian war. During the 1990s, the USA passed the buck to Turkey to contain Russian influence in the South Caucasus. In the early to mid-2000s, however, the Russian–Turkish relations were improved so rapidly that the USA opted, through NATO expansion, to step in as an offshore balancer. Following Bush administration's decision to support the Georgian candidacy for NATO membership and Georgia's ill-fated attempt to seize South Ossetia, Moscow went to war to re-establish hegemony in the South Caucasus. In this way, as the theory of Offensive Realism claims, the Kremlin believes that Russian state will enhance its chances of survival in the anarchical international system.     

Visualization of “people” in Soviet Estonian public photographs of the Stalinist era

The main purpose of this article is to elaborate some conceptual tools for clearer analysis of social reality, power relations and their visual representations. One of these instruments through which power relations are established in society is photography. The paper focuses on different strategies by which, in photography, the “people” are constructed as a homogeneous whole of specific historical self-reflection of culture. The first part of the paper discusses the relationship between the theory of hegemony as elaborated by Ernesto Laclau and the semiotics of culture of Yuri Lotman. The ground for believing this incorporation of the two thinkers to be successful is the very apparent theoretical congeniality between them. They both belong to the Saussurean ontological terrain. The second part of the paper tries to develop a bridge between the given theoretical framework, especially Laclau's concept of empty signifier and Barthes's concepts of studium/punctum, and “iconic photograph” from visual rhetoric. I will distinguish four hegemonical strategies of signification: visual naming, dominant text, code text, and dominant language. The analysed material is taken from Stalin-era soviet Estonia's newspaper and magazine photographs.     

Civil society in an age of globalization: A neo-Gramscian perspective

Abstract

Since the 1970s, the world has seen an intensification of the globalization processes of social relations, an intensification that has direct implications for the study of contemporary world politics. One important aspect of such implications concerns the emergence of new actors in world politics, not just in national terms, but also at the local, regional and global levels—in other words, approaching the global political economy as a whole. In some sense, it is possible to say that dominant and dominated social groups are being influenced and are influencing such globalization processes, so at present it would be possible to note the rising of a transnational fraction of the capitalist class and the rise of a globalized resistance within the ambit of a civil society influenced by globalization processes. Therefore, the objective of the current article is to analyze the transformation process of social forces in an age of the intensification of globalization of social relations. Put another way, the article assesses the transformations of civil society in an age of globalization that present new dilemmas and possibilities to the collective political agency in the twenty-first century.