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The question of why states comply with international law lies at the intersection of international relations (IR) and international law (IL) scholarship. In addition, the domestic and international outrage at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay has brought U.S. compliance with the Geneva Conventions into the public discourse. Understanding whether these events were an anomaly or whether they reflect existing trends in U.S. compliance with the laws of war is crucial to understanding what is next for the United States in this current climate of warfare. It has become shorthand among some academics, policy-makers, and pundits to assume the Bush Administration has systematically ignored international law. This paper examines the sources of variation in U.S. treatment of Prisoners of War (POWs) over time in order to compare and contrast the adherence to the international laws governing the treatment of prisoners during Operation Iraqi Freedom with previous U.S. conflicts abroad. This paper seeks to fill a gap in the empirical understanding about the correspondence between state behavior and legal rules. It empirically measures the normative force of international law by examining if there are noticeable patterns associated with variations in compliance. This broader debate about the importance of norms is consequential to a broad range of theoretical and policy issues in the new legal environment of the Global War on Terror. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of a broader wave of private regulation and "corporate social responsibility" initiatives in the 1990s, several private associations emerged that claim to certify companies as complying with international labor standards. In the U.S. the existing programs are the Fair Labor Association, Social Accountability International, and Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production. (A fourth initiative, the Worker Rights Consortium takes a different approach than the others.) This paper describes these labor standards certification and monitoring initiatives. The paper is organized in five main parts: 1. Institutional structure and scope: In general labor standards certification initiatives take the form of non-profit associations that develop a set of standards (or a code of conduct) for factory conditions and accredit external auditors to assess compliance. The programs differ somewhat in structure and content, but there are some preliminary reasons to think they may not differ so much in practice. 2. Political constituency and support base: A subset of companies and labor and human rights NGOs have been the main support base of certification and monitoring. In the U.S. organized labor was initially at the table, but pulled back in protest and remains highly skeptical. 3. Relationship to state governance: In contrast to the popular wisdom, the emergence of labor standards certification systems is strongly tied to the state, which provided decisive early leadership and funding. 4. Impacts: The impacts of certification and monitoring associations have been limited. No radical transformation of the apparel industry has occurred, although both horror stories and success stories exist. It appears that any significant impact of these programs is likely to come in combination with activist campaigns and government policy. 5. Broader perspectives and questions: A fuller understanding of transnational private regulation can be developed by comparing multiple types of certification and developing theoretically informed accounts of their emergence and significance. Here I briefly compare labor standards certification and forest certification, and suggest that the varieties of institutional theories in the social sciences offer a promising set of analytic lenses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that what we call ?development? must be understood as part of a post-World War II project to reconfigure the circuit of capital that, during the nineteenth century, linked the export sectors of Europe?s dualistic economies to those in other regions of the world. This project, a massive and coordinated campaign by Western, newly independent, and ?developing? states worked effectively to eradicate social democracy and to consolidate dualistic structures throughout what has become, as a result, the vast, global ?third world?. Immediately after World War II a scholastic programme emerged in the U.S. academy to support this endeavour. Section I of the paper argues that this academic ?development project? has had a profound impact on post-war historiography and social science. The research and writing produced under its auspices was characterised by a tendency to sever social scientific inquiry from issues relating to historical agency and social change, class and power; and this tendency eventually came to characterize U.S. social science, generally. Section II focuses on the larger ?development? project. It first discusses the trans-local interactions and connections that, beginning in the late eighteenth century, brought about the development of dualistic economies within and outside of Europe. It then describes the circuit of capital that was carried on by a trans-local network of elites, governments, and ruling groups throughout the nineteenth century. Section III focuses on how this circuit was reconfigured as a result of the world wars and by means of decolonisation, nationalism, ?first? and ?second? world development, and globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an overview of the evolution of IR theory as an essentially Western, especially American social science. It highlights the historical and philosophical underpinnings of IRT, its close nexus with the Western state-system and Western political thought. It then looks at the marginal place of Asians political experience and philosophical traditions in IR theory and examines the reasons for this. Finally the paper explores the different ways in which greater integration of Asian into IRT can be accomplished. It addresses much the same issues as are outlined in the panel proposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part 1: The paper discusses the transformation of liberalism after September 11 and the development of practices of liberalism inside European societies. It proposes an alternative view to the vision of unilateralism or of Empire that most analysts are exploring. It aims to show the role of the different transnational networks of security professionals, their impact on politicians and the consequences of the shift of technologies of surveillance regarding civil liberties by proposing to combine Agamben and Foucault works with the notion of Ban Opticon. Part 2: The paper will analyze the changing relationship between new security challenges and the way new technologies transform the practice of war. The history and emerging relationship between practices of security and the principles of the democratic public sphere will also be explored. An analysis will be developed of the means and methods of threat assessment and the vulnerability of critical infrastructures, most notably the specific cases of telecommunication networks, water systems, nuclear plants, cyberspace and knowledge-based experts networks, the commercial privatisation of technologies of surveillance and control. To explore the security policies and warfare strategies that result from the security environment of a globalised world, which make Western, societies ‘risk societies’. Part 3: The tragic terrorist attacks of September 11 seem to have made all political actors aware that each home security policy is ensured at the global level, or that it was not ensured at all. The natural democratic solidarity against terrorism becomes a rhetoric common place. Not a question. Why and how the question of democracy have been bent to new times rather than questioned? Our main objective in this paper is to underline how the question of terrorism going beyond the national borders which requires mutual assistance and mutual co-operation is a symbolic, political and identity issue. The core of our intention will be thus to show how the antiterrorist fight in Europe is initially dominated by the problems of the recognition of each other Member State as an inter pares member of this whole Europe of democracies. Under this angle, the co-operation understood as a hyperbolic discourse of always more, never enough, structured on the official history of an initial deficit of the European security is then the point of conversion of the national characteristics into a common identity. In other words, the progressive installation of ad hoc European institutions envisaged according to the principle of coordination of the police and legal efforts produced a network of exchanges which ensures the circulation of significance and strong collective identity representations. Even if the fight against terrorism and by extension against organized crime is carried out by a large number of police, intelligence and judicial actors, they all are involved in the same global (re)definition of the European identity. In fact, it is because there is a complex web of different national cultures, practices in order to fight against terrorism, that according each other around a single discourse is a real political opportunity. But does this political identity construction is really stable? The different national positions after the 9.11 events seem to have turned the historical European collective identity process upside down and the democratic solidarity is everything but an embattled narrative between an us and them distinction process. In other words, by dismounting these official processes of historicization which make of the European co-operation a reality born of the dialogue around a necessary solidarity of the European States vis-à-vis to the terrorist threat, and to deal with the different discourses after the 9.11 attacks, it is rather a question of showing how the co-operation is a requirement for a political and diplomatic legibility between countries and actors of Europe. A Europe which offers the insurance of a collective common and reassuring identity: the democracy for everyone. Regarding the democratic European and national discourses after 9.11, we will answer to the question of the (re)definition of the democratic European identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern liberal citizenship is a failing design, and this is nowhere more apparent than in the contemporary US. Currently there is a frenzy around US citizenship â€" who has it but shouldn’t have it, who should have it but doesn’t have it, who had it but renounced it. The sheer volume of ideas, images, and events and their mass circulation makes it almost impossible not to notice how unsettled and unsettling contemporary US citizenship has become. If, as designer Bruce Mau suggests, the success of a design is its invisibility, then it seems that the design of contemporary US citizenship is anything but a success (Mau, 2004:1). Taking seriously the claim that modern liberal citizenship is a failing design, I focus on how citizenship is designed and redesigned through history. My central research question is â€" What are the design principles of modern liberal citizenship, and how are they experienced in the contemporary US? Noting that modern liberal citizenship emerged from state security debates and that security concerns preoccupy those in the contemporary US, I investigate not only how citizenship is designed but how safe citizenship is designed. As such, I am less concerned with the legal definition of citizenship than with the practical packaging of citizenship as part of a design for safe living. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comprises a study of contemporary statecraft by Western actors. While the U.S. has been consumed in the application of an array of hard power instruments in two ongoing wars, the EU has quietly developed a panoply of softer instruments that it ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a neo-classical realist model for explaining shifts and variations in US grand strategy. The model is based on a distinction between four ideal-type grand strategies or approaches to security according to the objectives and means of security policy: defensive and offensive realism, and defensive and offensive liberalism. While the four approaches are continually present in the US policy community, it is the combination of two systemic conditions, namely the distribution of capabilities and the balance of threat, that selects among the competing approaches and determines which grand strategy is likely to emerge as dominant in a given period. While great power parity is conducive to realist approaches, a situation of hegemony allows the liberal perspectives to emerge. In addition, a relative absence of external threat encourages defensive approaches, while a situation of high external threat gives rise to offensive strategies. Thus, various combinations of these systemic factors give rise to the emergence of various grand strategies. This model is tested in the case of the most recent shift in US grand strategy following 9/11. In accordance with the expectations of the model, a change in the distribution of capabilities with the end of Cold War made possible a change from realist to liberal strategies, while the change in the balance of threat after 9/11 gave rise to the grand strategy of offensive liberalism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between national governments and financial systems is nowhere more intertwined than in markets for public debt. In an era of global finance, government debt markets are a barometer of the financial and economic well-being of a respective country. However, these markets have come to play a broader role, for instance, in monetary policy linking together disparate parts of the financial system. As well, government securities provide secure assets needed to offset risk and provide liquidity. Beyond simply the fiscal balance of the state, the structure, regulation and governance of public debt markets greatly shapes the wider domestic financial system and the way in which this domestic system fits into the global financial order. Using a comparison of public debt markets, this paper explores the way in which financial practices and governance developed within the US Treasury market have shaped global norms and examines how this relates to US structural power. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the question how the application of the ICC's ordering principles of complementarity and moral accountability will impact the composition of what Rawls has called ´decent hierarchical societies´. In answering this question, I propose that Rawls's minimalist threshold of justice explains the social obstacles of (state) cooperation regarding the ICC and establishes an important starting point for evaluating its evolving dynamics. Rawls's "Law of Peoples" thus moves us beyond a strictly realpolitik interpretation of the ICC - which reflects the pessimism underlying the ICC's enforcement powers or its future efficacy. It does so by offering us an important means of balancing the ICC's universal morality against state politics and the challenges posed by the lack of a reliable (global) enforcement mechanism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proposition that states balance against power or threats is a cornerstone of international relations theory, but very little work has been done on exactly what constitutes an act of "hard balancing". This paper distinguishes between four types of hard balancing behavior and argues that the United States tends to balance against, and contain, threats from peer competitors or near peer competitors differently than other great powers in history. In particular, whereas 19th and early 20th century European great powers were inclined to see their adversaries as legitimate actors with legitimate interests regardless of the way they are organized, the United States?only the world's second ever democratic great power?equates legitimacy with regime type and a state's internal behavior. Thus, while most great powers have sought to stabilize and preserve the basic contours of a balance of power and spheres of influence, the United States, on those occasions when it has chosen to engage the world rather than isolate itself from it, has tried to collapse the power base of its autocratic rivals and transform the international system. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criticizing US neglect of Latin America has become a popular exercise in US journals and newspapers. Indeed, when reviewing the recent political crises throughout the region as well as the ‘turn to the left’ that has taken place at least in South America, US actions and reactions may seem erratic or entirely ignorant. By analyzing the US role during recent political turbulences in South America, the paper takes issue with this attempt to explain US behavior by simply pointing towards some general stance of neglect. In contrast, it is argued that the complex processes of crisis, continuity and change in South America imply contradictory incentives and limits to a US government that frames its activities as guided by the democratic ideal and yet cannot renounce its specific national preferences in the name of democracy’s intrinsic value. The frame constituted by democratic rhetoric appears as, at the same time, constraining and enabling US policies towards South America: While the dual goal ‘democracy promotion and protection’ clearly constrains the range of justifiable (re-) actions, its normative indecisiveness opens important margins for the pursuit of particularistic prefer-ences. When taking into account the concrete settings in the different ‘target’ countries, US actions, reactions and inactions can be explained quite well without assuming some general inattention that proves overly simplifying. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nonproliferation regime today is under siege from many directions. The US as the pre-eminent world power is currently engaged in efforts to modify the regime without striking at its fundamental principles. One such attempt was the July 2005 declaration signed by US President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. While this agreement has mixed implications for the health of the nonproliferation regime, my research suggests that the overall impact is likely to be minimal. This is because states acquire or give up nuclear weapons because of regional and domestic political factors or due to fear of US intervention. I also find that the nonproliferation regime is unable in its present state to accommodate rising powers such as India, which desire to behave responsibly towards the world. In this period of regional power transition, the regime needs to be adjusted accordingly. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Realist IR scholars have become increasingly committed to the canons of positivist social science. Contemporary realist theorizing largely presupposes a strict separation of subject and object, emphasizing ?theory testing? and ?prediction? as touchstones of social science. For example, Stephen Walt noted with satisfaction that security studies (which ?fits comfortably within the realist paradigm?) ?adopted the norms and objectives of social science,? including the development of theories and ?the testing [of} their predictions against a scientifically selected body of evidence.? And John Mearsheimer urged scholars to ?use their theories to make predictions about the future . . . The world can be used as a laboratory to decide which theories best explain international politics.? If the world is a laboratory, it is incumbent upon realist theorists to detach themselves from the political events anticipated by their theories in the same manner that, say, a chemist avoids intervening in the experimental processes underway in his lab. In practice, however, realist IR scholars often intervene in political reality. They consult national security agencies, whisper in the ears of decision makers, write op-ed pieces, give interviews, and sign petitions in an attempt to influence policy and shape political events. For example, in recent months realists of all stripes have engaged in an overt political campaign against U.S. policy in Iraq. In their actual practices, then, realist scholars attempt to construct and re-construct political reality without realizing that the very act of their political intervention subverts the neat subject-object separation presupposed by their theories. By abandoning positivist presuppositions and drawing instead on constructivist approaches that regard purpose and analysis as ?part and parcel of a single process? (E. H. Carr), realists could greatly reduce the dissonance between their epistemological principles and their actual practices. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of whether policy makers learn from past experience is both a central and a vexing to students of foreign policy analysis. As Levy (1994) has noted, it is the latter because it is fraught with conceptual and methodological problems, but it is central because establishing the presence of learning would legitimate the idea that leadersÂ’ beliefs, cognitions and attitudes mattered when predicting the behavior of states in the international system. While some attempts have been made to systematically assess the impact of prior success or failure on foreign policy choices, most of these have focused on behavioral indicators of learning (i.e. change in strategy over time) rather than systematically assessing changes in the mental states of the decision makers. This analysis of the belief systems of US Presidents in response to crisis outcomes attempts to fill this void. The International Crisis Behavior project dataset provides a subset of crises for which we examine US behavior, target behavior and crisis outcomes. We use using the Verbs in Context system of content analysis to generate operational code indicators for the relevant US President before and after the crisis in order to establish whether congruence or disparity between each PresidentsÂ’ subjective representation of the situation and his anticipated behavior of the opponent interacts with outcome quality to reinforce or change his belief structures. We then determine whether Presidents exhibiting belief change are more likely to demonstrate learning by acting differently in the next crisis. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]