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The creation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) could be seen as an assertion and reinforcement of the hegemony of the United States over the Internet. By United States I mean not just the US Government, but also its industry, its technology and in many respects the values associated with a liberal democratic order in communications. The paper will describe and investigate the nature of his hegemonic system, making it clear that simplistic notions of US dominance imposed on an unwilling world don’t get one very far. What we see instead are several self-reinforcing cycles of the sort that made Silicon Valley the world capital of IT innovation and Hollywood the world capital for filmmaking: network effects and agglomeration economies and first-mover advantages. The hegemonic system did not follow traditional national lines. The Internet protocols were victorious in a standards war that pitted TCP/IP against protocols (OSI) that were backed not only by European governments and European telecommunications operators, but also by the US Department of Commerce and many US telephone companies. The early Internet community was international in scope; although it was centered in and mostly populated by US computer scientists, it embraced several European and Asian institutes. These non-US technologists were outside the mainstream in their own countries and both the US and the non-US technologists often showed more allegiance to their own epistemic community than to their governments. Nevertheless, when it came time to privatize and commercialize the Internet the US government did retain the ability to control the terms of the governance transition because US military and civilian contractors were operating the centralized naming and numbering spaces. More significantly, despite its initial promise that it would fully privatize ICANN, the US reneged and retained indefinitely an unusual form of unilateral contractual control over what is ostensibly an international organization. Not much later, concerns about security and terrorism post 9-11 reinforced the decision to keep a US grip on the root of the Internet, making the relationship between ICANN and the USG a delicate matter. In addition to clarifying the historical emergence of US dominance of the Internet this paper will have three parts: * First, by way of factual background, it will analyze the institutional relationships between ICANN and the US government. * Second, it will explore and describe the ways in which assertions of the identity of a distinct Internet community interact with regional/cultural and national identities in the politics of ICANN. In developing this analysis, a critique of academically romantic notions of diversity and difference will emerge. * Third, it will explore the extent to which ICANN’s creation was a direct challenge to the hegemony of traditional intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), especially the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It will pay particular attention to the efforts of the ITU to undermine ICANN’s legitimacy and assert a role for traditional IGOs in Internet governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the use of different forms of power by a (leader/patron/hegemonic) state to get the other (non-leader/client) states cooperate with its policies: the use of different forms of power in obtaining cooperation from other states in exercising economic sanctions against a target state. Most of the literature on cooperation operate on the level of bargaining power where the policy changes are directly visible to or observable by the researcher. In this paper, I attempt to show how bargaining power model is not adequate in capturing the complete picture of the relationship between Turkey (a non-leader/client state) and the US (leader/patron state) in their cooperation and non-cooperation with regard to Iraq during the Gulf Crisis and the US War Against Iraq, respectively. In that regard, I attempt to show that the three levels of power (Krause 1991) is a much better and more comprehensive framework in understanding and explaining the power relationship between Turkey and the US. There are three main objectives of this study: (1) to shed more light on the cooperation process, (2) to challenge the conventional wisdom in the area of cooperation that states? cooperative or non-cooperative behaviors are best understood or explained on the bargaining level, and (3) to challenge the utility of paradigms, in this case the rational choice, in the discipline. This study attempts to show why a client state cooperates with a patron state even when this does not look as the best interest to that state, i.e., that state?s first preference is not to cooperate or that state does not have a dominant strategy to cooperate. Similarly, this study also aims at showing why a client state does not cooperate with a patron state even though cooperation seems to be the best interest to the client state. My working hypothesis is that Turkey?s cooperation (or non-cooperation) with the US with regard to the Iraq issue can not be fully understood or explained by using solely a bargaining model which focuses on directly observable (visible) results of a policy or an observable policy change that, for example, could be utilized by either empirical non-quantifiable, or empirical quantifiable data. Lisa Martin?s (1992) game theoretical model is a good framework to look at the relationship between the two states on the bargaining level. But it does not take into consideration the two other levels of power, i.e., it focuses on bargaining power, and omits structural power and hegemonic power. A comprehensive framework of different forms of power relationship between a patron state and a client state is needed to explain the cooperative/non-cooperative behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The English School and its master concept ?international society? is currently enjoying a renaissance. The paper seeks to sustain this revitalization by suggesting how a firmer grasp of the School?s potential can be achieved by situating its contribution in the context of sociological World Society Theory. This move promises to heighten its theoretical reflexivity as well as its awareness of the non-political context of modern politics. The viability of an updated English School approach is discussed in the light of an empirical challenge: the implications of the unipolar power structure that privileges the United States in the contemporary states system. It can be argued that unipolarity introduces a degree of systemic hierarchy conflicting with central English School premises, i.e. the importance of shared intersubjective norms and anarchical state equality. The paper argues that unipolarity does indeed challenge evolving international society but also that it is unlikely to obstruct the emergence of a world order based on differentiated and interactive governance frameworks. A reflexive English School approach contributes fruitfully to our understanding of this development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will consider alternative modes of balancing in the international system. Given the enormous lead that the United States currently enjoys in military affairs, internal military balancing is not a realistic option for any single country desiring to offset the hegemon’s power. Nevertheless, many other strategies are available to would-be challengers. A subtler strategy can be employed: the delegitimation of the adversary’s behavior. The use of a delegitimizing discourse avoids direct confrontation, while it undermines one of the sources of the adversary’s power. It does so by attracting potential allies who share certain affinities, and by facilitating defections from the target state?s camp. We investigate the use of delegitimation strategies in two widely different settings: Rome and the Holy Roman Empire, and Soviet-Egyptian relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bush Administration faced serious constraints in its attempts to build a broad military coalition in the months preceding the March 2003 invasion. This paper examines the factors that contributed to U.S. authority prior to the war, which is defined here as the particular pattern of European states' consent to and dissent from U.S. requests for contributions. The central argument is that the normative component of public opinion—referred to here as domestic policy legitimacy—interacts with states' economic capabilities to determine ally states' responses to U.S. diplomatic requests, and that authority was degraded in part because U.S. policy departed from broadly accepted international norms of legitimacy—in this case, norms regulating the use of force in the international context. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a time when many decry the hegemony of the United States, the world’s only superpower, we overlook regional hegemonic powers and cultures. The People’s Republic of China is about to become such a regional hegemonic power, as evidenced by the modernization of PLA. This paper is an interdisciplinary comparative reflection--embracing culture, history, religion, geography as well as politics--on the responsive strategies of three societies at the margins--Tibet, Mongolia, Vietnam--in response to the hegemonic growth and behavior of China. These strategies are cultural as much as they are military, diplomatic, political or economic. The paper asserts that the three different strategies reflect the unique circumstances of the marginal societies. Ultimately, given the critical mass of China, none of the strategies may be successful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In its recently published National Security Strategy report, the United States asserts not only its military supremacy, but also associates that military power with a new moral vision for the international system. A vision in which the United States has the authority to wage preventive war. The United States seeks what Antonio Gramsci refers to as hegemony, i.e., the weaker parties’ acceptance of domination as morally legitimate. Although the document itself uses strictly secular language, U. S. President George W. Bush frequently uses religious language to describe and justify the United States’ war on terrorism and its recent war in Iraq. Even as President Bush sought to legitimize U.S. policy with religious language, the Vatican and almost all U. S. Christian denominations were prominent critics of the United States’ war in Iraq. The Vatican has even described some of the points of the National Security Strategy as dangerous illusions, which will lead to wars without end. An examination of the debate between these religious actors critiquing international politics and an international political actor asserting moral authority provides an opportunity to examine the role of authority in international relations, the sources of authority in global politics, and the role of religion in the construction of global hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the change in the perceptions of the world community with regard to hegemony in the U.S. Change in focus from the military dimension to the economic and technological dimension of power, namely the softer component of power; Manner in which the U.S. can capitalize on the notion of soft power; Discussion of the dramatic shift in perceptions of U.S. power as witnessed in the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This paper examines new twists in the productive power formations of the contemporary world system by reconsidering the U.S.A. as a "hyper-power" in the world after 1991. From Somalia in 1993 to Iraq in 2003, the authority and force of America, as the planet's sole putative hyper-power, were rising in many tallies of the balance of forces for geoeconomic and geopolitical competitions all across the world. Since May 1, 2003, and President Bush's "mission accomplished" moment for America as the world's "Top Gun" aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, however, this hyperpower of the U.S.A. essentially is evaporating. Did it ever exist, what was it, and did belief in it lead to the current New World Order of endless, and essentially indecisive, struggle in what the Pentagon now calls "the Long War"? In answer, the study asks, as the costs of this long war cascade across the U.S.A. in heightened geopolitical, economic, and personal insecurities, if such hyper-power proves to be more than "hype-power." Indeed, it suggests that a great deal of state power after the end of the Cold War appears to be hype-power at its root, since authority is depicted, written, and talked about as potential force far more than it is used as actual force in the field. When it is actually mobilized, whether Washington was taking Kandahar, holding Karbala, or managing Katrina, power seems to stumble. Hype-power is used as much, or more, to manage collective impressions of such debacles than hyper-power is deployed to impose effective order upon the world. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one of the major powers of the world, the United States has been a crucial external factor in the relations between East and West Germany, North and South Korea, as well as between Mainland China and Taiwan. Although the United States has been an alley to West Germany, South Korea, and Taiwan, it nevertheless never closed the door of contact and negotiation with East Germany, North Korea and Mainland China. Adding to the complexity of the picture is the fact that United States has always held ambivalent positions toward the unification of these divided nations. The combined effect of these conflicting elements has led to the complex role of the United States vis-à-vis the divided nations which is the hegemonic dominator at times, the calculative balancer at others, and the one-sided protector of the non-communist side of divided nations at still others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We seek to understand how the structure of authority influences the conduct of military interventions. Do military leaders have more discretion under multilateral operations or unilateral ones? Do troop contributing nations have more influence over how their forces are used through institutionalized efforts or more ad hoc ones with few countries involved? We apply principal-agent theory here as part of a larger project. We seek to compare the US-led effort in Afghanistan with the UN and NATO operations in the same country. This allows us to control for a variety of other potentially confounding factors. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]