Search

Under which circumstances and why do warring factions comply with third-parties' demands for the cessation of hostilities, and when do such calls go unheeded? The existing literature on multilateral conflict management and compliance with international regimes does not offer empirical answers to these questions; leaving researchers and policy-makers alike with little guidance on how the multilateral actors can most effectively impact on the behavior of governments and rebel groups engaged in armed conflict. This study aims at closing this lacuna. Based on the current literature on cooperation, compliance, and conflict management, it develops a theory of compliance with United Nations Security Council resolutions in civil wars. Using a new dataset coded and compiled for this study at the International Peace Institute, it then tests this theory by analyzing civil-war parties' compliance with all requests for military de-escalation addressed by the Security Council to factions in twenty-four civil wars between 1989 and 2003, using multilevel MLE models. The paper is the first large-n quantitative analysis of compliance with United Nations Security Council resolutions in armed conflict. The paper finds that compliance with Security Council resolutions in civil wars is strongly correlated with the conflict-management ecology, the compliance strategy pursued by the United Nations, great-power dynamics in the Security Council, and the linkage between the Council's effort and ongoing peace processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The massive destructive consequences of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami,have called attention to the phenomenal failure of the international community to provide early warning before the disaster,and the chaotic disaster relief efforts after the extent of the catastrphy became evident.These lessons have made the need for the establishment of an institutionalized disaseter warning and disaster relief regime a matter of great urgency.This paper offers a well structured agenda ,detailed outline of the fundamentals ,and the parameters pertaining to the main issues such a regim would have to address.Due to the enormity of the task,the paper makes an argument for an Asia first approach due to the experience acquired since 2004 in that region.If it will be successful there, the regime buildig policy process can be extended to other regions.These incremental expansion would eventually lead to the establisment of a politically integrated and coordinated global early warning and disaster relief regime. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TV guide published a story during the U.S.-led war against Iraq that advised adults on steps that will minimize the potential for distress and reassure children during an unsettling time, just one story among many devoted to hand wringing out the effects of the war on terror on U.S. children. My research on the role of children in framing U.S. foreign policy for the public is intended to explore the role that ubiquitous stories about children and war, which began during the Gulf War of 1990-1991, play in the presentation of U.S. foreign policy, and the connections between childhood and the performance of comtemporary U.S. masculinity. In a paper that I presented at last year’s International Studies Association, I stressed that while conventional paradigms of masculinity, centered on rescue, protection, and chivalry are compatible with varous humanitarian interventions to ostensibly save women and children, insufficient attention has been given to the way in which consumption-driven constructions of both childhood and masculinity play a role in U.S. foreign policy. In other words, out traditional notions of both childhood and manhood have been chnaging in light of market-driven developments in advertising and branding, and these changes are being rather seamlessly woven into foreign policy representations. I intend to apply my ideas about childhood masculinities, which have developed further in the past year, to the war on terror in Afhanistan and Iraq. In so doing, I hope to further extend the application of my ideas about children and foreign policy, and contribute to further clarification about our understanding of masculinity and foreign policy as well. (quote from Mark Laswell, 2003: Kids and the Telivision War. TV Guide. April 12-18: 18-21.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper will address the issue of state participation in international institutions. Very frequently, studies of international organisation look at state membership as the most obvious quantitative indicator of state participation in different institutional webs. However, state participation in international institutions varies significantly, although there are several methodological dilemmas as to how it would be possible to account for such variation. The paper will attempt to analyse what will be termed as institutional participation and what will be referred to as normative participation. It will seek to map the criteria that can be used for identifying various degrees of state participation in international institutions. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the most effective ways of heightening the public and media salience of human rights issues in an era when security concerns habitually are granted top billing? In this paper, I examine one way that international human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) attempt to mobilize public opinion in democratic societies. Such NGOs attempt to draw attention to human rights abuses abroad in order to increase the salience of such issues to the voting public in such a way that electoral pressures can be brought to bear on the leadership of democratic major power states ? states that may have the ability to influence human rights abroad. Related research has demonstrated that domestic politics can influence the extent to which donor states incorporate human rights into their foreign aid policy.In recent years, one of the ways that NGOs have most successfully drawn public attention to human rights abuses has been to enlist the help of celebrity spokespersons. These high-profile representatives by definition command a degree of media coverage and public attention that rivals not only those of NGO heads but also of most elected political leaders. Recent examples of human rights-related NGOs whose campaigns have received substantially higher levels of coverage following celebrity endorsement include the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, Amnesty International, and Drop the Debt. Using both quantitative and qualitative content analysis of media coverage and public opinion regarding of these and other NGO campaigns over the last ten years, I examine the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement as a tool that NGOs can wield in their battles for influence over public opinion and elected officials. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What makes a growing number of congressional members sponsor and cosponsor foreign policy bills and resolutions? Although proactive legislative behavior increasingly influences U.S. foreign policy decisions, little empirical research exists on this topic of foreign policy cosponsorships. This paper investigates members' cosponsorship behavior by focusing on the North Korea debate on Capitol Hill, from the 103rd (1993-94) through the 111th Congress (2009-10). Whereas previous research views cosponsorship as a position-taking tool or a coalition-building signal, I argue that foreign policy cosponsorship activities have a great deal to do with members' personal interests and policy expertise. Findings from the Poisson regression analyses suggest that neither voters nor parties direct the North Korea debate. Instead, this paper shows how congressional members use low-cost cosponsorship strategies to promote their own foreign policy interests, particularly with constituency pressure and party influence largely absent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores foreign involvement in Africa as part of energy security. As the international players seek to secure the flow of oil at reasonable prices using sometimes approaches of stark contrast between the West and the East, we look at what is left from this game for Africa. The paper seeks to find out how international energy-related involvements impact the African states where internal institutions are too weak to manage abrupt changes that associate with the large oil sector such as political and fiscal reforms and the economic shocks. Africa is tremendously abundant in oil. Although Africa is just waking up as the new energy powerhouse, it has experienced intensive foreign engagement in other resources including slavery and raw materials long before the colonial era began. This paper argues that history of foreign exploitation for resources is accountable for Africa's failure to perform well despite its promising resource endowment but will remain so as long as Africa supplies resources for the world as crucial as oil. Liberal economists argue that resource industries bring foreign investments needed for states' economic development. Oil companies and foreign government resonate this argument as they claim to build infrastructure projects, provide aid and assist transparency and democratic progress in the places they operate. While external investors reap large commercial benefits, Africa has continued to suffer with wars, abject poverty and bad governance. This paper looks closely whether the approaches they use contribute to Africa's resource curse. It begins with brief discussion of the definition and causes of the resource curse existing in the literature. It then moves onto foreign involvements in Africa for oil security, the focus of this study, provided as part of the cause to the resource curse in the region. In this sector, it explains how Africa has stepped up as a strategic location for international energy, who involves in the African oil game and what approaches they employ by economic, political and military means. By this, the paper sheds light on the unaddressed relations between foreign resource extractions and the resource curse discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most existing research on business political influence treats business as a homogenous group and focuses on its interaction with the state. The paper demonstrates that competitive relations between businesses can be an important factor influencing governance. The paper argues that an intra-industry conflict between pharmaceutical companies conducting research and development (R&D) of new drugs and companies manufacturing generic medicines significantly shaped the global governance of pharmaceutical intellectual property. A conceptual framework is proposed that highlights the nexus between governance and companies' competitiveness and, therefore, the possibility of business political conflict. In addition, the concept of contextual power resources is developed to explain which business interests prevailed in the conflict. The research examines three periods, in which global pharmaceutical IP governance evolved: the negotiations of the WTO TRIPS Agreement (1986-1994); the debate on TRIPS and public health (1996- 2003); and the negotiations of US Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) (2000-2007). The outcomes of the TRIPS and FTA negotiations benefited R&D-based companies, the outcome of the debate on TRIPS and public health benefited generics companies. The paper argues that the variation in outcome can be explained by variation in the contextual power resources available to the two business groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the correspondence between Kantian ethics and Kantian politics concerning the question of emancipation in world politics. The chapter is divided into three parts, the first of which focuses on the political implications of Kant's ethics, particularly the second formulation of the Categorical Imperative (CI) (the duty to treat all others as ends-in-themselves) and the normative ideal of the Kingdom of Ends this evinces. The moral law is interpreted as to set explicit ends for political development towards greater approximations of right and it is this notion that is taken to be the core of Kant's vision of emancipation - an ideal that continues to animate CT and CIRT. The second part critically interrogates this emancipatory potential in the moral law against the programmatic aspects of Kant's political philosophy and finds that key aspects of Kant's politics openly contradict the ethical precepts of the CI in regards to; (i) public discriminations against women and dependents; (ii) the permissibility of social inequality, and; (iii) undue limitations imposed on resistance and political change. In the final part, Kant's ethics is tested against his idea of the World Federation and whether it is sufficiently rendered to approximate the Kingdom of Ends in the cosmopolitan sphere. By exploring some of the limitations Kant placed on cosmopolitan community, the paper concludes by suggesting that it is the attempt to overcome these shortcomings in the original Kantian program that motivates a significant part of the ongoing commitment to the emancipatory project in Critical International Relations Theory (CIRT). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The armed conflict in the Republic of Tajikistan, which involved the country's four regions vying for access to the political apparatus after the collapse of the Soviet Union, has been noted for its sudden escalation to violent conflict in 1992, the climax of fighting between 1992 and 1993, as well as its termination via peace settlement in June 1997. Yet, while the overt violent conflict only lasted less than a year, it claimed up to 60,000 lives and displaced an estimated one million people who fled into neighboring countries. Over ten years later, Tajik society has not seen a resurgence of direct violence, but the lasting effects of its period of non-violence may have produced a worse result which involves the presence of latent or structural violence. At the political level, the country's peace process which involved a political sharing arrangement has not been enforced since 2000 and leaves many opposition members isolated from the political process. The level of endemic corruption, lack of press freedoms, along with an increasing rate of drug, arms and human trafficking from South Asia to Eastern Europe, and continuing violence along its southern border with Afghanistan are significant hindrances to sustainable development within the country. Its economic dependency on remittances through labor migration has floated, yet not alleviated the economic development of the country, and instead, accompanied with nation-building strategies of encouraging Tajiki language over Russian language development, has left many Tajiks migrating to Russian-speaking countries susceptible to trafficking and forced labor. Problematically, the aforementioned risk factors are often tolerated both nationally and internationally as acceptable in the absence of direct violence. And while all are significant, the focus of this paper is not on evaluating the risk factors alone, but is focused on the lack of social and religious freedoms which have been highlighted by the Tajik government as "the" source of potential instability for Tajikistan. It is my thesis that it is correlation of the aforementioned factors with the current exploitation of social and religious affairs by the Tajik government for political gain that needs to be considered as increasing the potential for Tajiki men and women to become radicalized. This hypothesis comes from the recent intensity of Government efforts to "secularize" social and religious practices in the country through the political process including regulating the usage of the hijab, the registration of madrassas, and the co-opting of Friday prayers at large mosques which have given rise to concerns for recruitment into more fringe or radicalized elements of Islamic practice. Civil Society organizations have recognized that this recent assault on social and religious life is detrimental in the face of political and economic instability, and have worked on preventive measures to counter the government crackdown in this sphere. This paper will summarize the aforementioned hypothesis, then delve into a discourse on the varying approaches to preventing radicalization between government offices and civil society organizations and where these two competing strategies (albeit asymmetrical in their power dynamic) leave Tajikistan's citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a world of rapid global changes and challenges, nation-states are no longer the sole important international actors; international security institutions are of growing importance. Yet, the interaction of these institutions is far from easy. Only specific aspects of policy problems are ascribed to different actors resulting in an overlap of issue areas. The successive cooperation to tackle security problems causes interlocking institutions. As a consequence, functional divisions of labor seem to be developing in the field of conflict management, one example being the EU and NATO which will be in the focus of this analysis. This paper looks at the relationship of the EU and NATO in conflict management. According to rational institutionalism, institutional functions are the outcome of member state positions and their ascription of specific functions and tasks. But the institutions and institutional actors themselves also have an influence on their agenda and performance. The paper examines the relationship between EU and NATO in conflict management, including which tasks and functions they perform. Then it analyzes whether cooperation and a possible functional division of labor is based on this functional ascription by member states or more on the activities of the institutions themselves. This comparative study will thereby contribute to a theory based analysis of the relationship of these major two international security institutions and it will show that principals (member states) and agents (international security institutions) are of importance in shaping these institutions and their agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper connects sociological theories of world risk society to current IR research on global governance. New global risks such as climate change, international terrorism and international financial crises, are confronting global politics with a new quality of challenges. As we argue in this paper, these global risks require new forms of preventive governance which transcend the functional limitations and territorial boundaries of both nation-states and existing international organizations. Therefore, these new forms of preventive governance must neither be equated nor confused with existing concepts of risk management and the 'prevention state' nor with concepts of 'global governance'. By distinguishing between regulatory and assertive governance, the paper identifies four varieties of global risk governance ranging from unilateral regulative governance to new forms of multilateral assertive governance. The normative ideal of 'global governance' integrating public and private actors in symmetrical forms of cooperation represents only one of these types. The paper concludes that these varieties of global risk governance are likely to stay and that global risk governance might be characterized by the combination of different types of governance even within specific issue areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, Postinternationalism has developed into an influential perspective in International Relations (IR). Core concepts such as the "sphere of authority" (Rosenau) or "polity" (Ferguson) have been applied to analyze transformative developments in global politics with regard to diverse actors and issues as well as system structure and interaction processes. This paper suggests that a postinternational approach can also provide helpful insights into the field of International Political Economy (IPE) by examining Multinational Corporations (MNCs) and their role in and impact on technological evolution. As a complex polity, MNCs have to accommodate various socio-political stakeholders, technological evolution, markets and national / global as well as public / private governance frameworks. The paper develops an integrative framework to critically investigate the challenges that MNCs face in managing the interconnected issues of technology, markets, regulatory governance and corporate identity in a rapidly changing global environment. It focuses on a case study of the German Siemens AG, one of the oldest and largest MNCs in the world and a leader in the information and communication technology (ICT) sectors of the 20th and 21st centuries. By analyzing Siemens' struggles to adapt to rapidly changing technology, new public policies (liberalization) and new corporate governance models during the 1990s and 2000s, the paper highlights the complex interconnectedness of technology, economics, politics and identity that make up the study of MNCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methods of assessing political leadership are often used independent of each other. This paper illustrates the gains of bridging two at-a-distance assessment of political personality in explaining foreign policy behavior. Leadership traits and operational code measure different idiosyncratic characteristics of political leaders. Utilizing both in a discussion of Turkey's foreign policy towards the United States in the post-Cold War era, I argue that together leadership traits and operational code analyses can offer more insight to understanding patterns in leaders' foreign policy choices. This paper employs two automated content analysis programs, TABARI and Profiler Plus. TABARI generates event data from newswire stories to assess foreign policy behavior, and Profiler Plus analyzes speeches, interviews of political leaders to profile their operational codes and/or personality traits. I show that Turkish prime ministers differ not only in terms of their leadership styles but also in terms of their beliefs about the United States. The paper illustrates that these differences make a better tool when they are taken together in explaining Turkey's foreign policy behavior towards the United States in the post-Cold War era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Weak states", "fragile states", "collapsed states", "fragmented states", not to speak of "rouge states": the problem of state disintegration has received considerable attention over the past few years, and numerous are the concepts put forward to try and describe the phenomenon. The various qualifications of states' internal problems have generally been accompanied by different "solutions" the international community should apply. Indeed, it can be argued that the different narratives on state failure have also had as a function to justify international interventions to try and solve the problems. As internal problems resulting of state failure, and especially armed conflicts threatening to destabilize entire regions, have increasingly come to be seen as international problems, the question of the international community's responsibilities has been posed in different forms (the principle of the "responsibility to protect" being one part of the proposed answers). The notion of "global governance", emerging along with an increased awareness on the relations of interdependence in today's globalized world, has been put forward as the overarching response to internal threats that may become international. This paper proposes to look closer at the relationship between state fragility and global governance through the study of the international efforts to put an end to the conflict in Darfur. The war in the Western province of Sudan broke out in 2003, and has for a long time been on the top of international agendas and to the highest degree been seen as an international affair. The Sudanese state is not a weak state however, on the contrary, it is best characterized as authoritarian. It's fragility stems rather from the turbulence at the centre, where constant power struggles have lead to shifting alliances, which in turn determine the conduct of state affairs. However, the Sudanese state has since the outbreak of the war in Darfur incessantly been portrayed as incapable to solve its internal problems, a framing that has justified international interventions on different levels (security level with an international peacekeeping mission, justice level through the prosecution by the International Criminal Court). This paper will explore how the internal conflict in Darfur became an international affair, in other words, how the political authority was transferred from an internal Sudanese level to an international level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper addresses the issue of "multilateral talks" or "forum" and tries to explain "why states often decide to create the talks for dealing with a security problem instead of resolving it through bilateral diplomacy or international regime?" Built upon the most recent experience of the Six-Party talks, the paper explores the effect of multilateralizing the dispute within a border context of regime theory in IR. My central claim is that the members of the talks decided to commit themselves to the talks since they have an unambiguous preference, i.e., the denuclearization in the Korea peninsular by coordinating their behaviors. Having realized that the second Korean War is a common aversion that they have to avoid, the members of the talks coordinated a variety of conflicting interests through the multilateral forum. The 2005 Joint Statement is the product of such coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives the outline of an ongoing dissertation project dealing with urban public policymaking in the face of global challenges. In contemporary studies on urban politics and globalization, there has been a bias towards studying economic logics and dimensions of global transformations, and very little attention has been paid to urban public policymaking in relation to the more negative forces unleashed by globalization, such as environmental degradation, climate change, diseases, trafficking of goods, people and weapons, transnational organized crime and global terrorism. What passes as urban policies today are often suffused with issues that are also in some sense global and every so often even touch upon „high politics?. Issues that are being defined in terms of global security challenges are increasingly enduring on local scales and local governments and city administrations around the world are becoming increasingly engaged in obtaining and institutionalizing their own competence and capacity on issue-areas relating to foreign affairs and international politics as well as developing local and transnational policy programmes to manage and mitigate various global challenges. Yet, this curios case of „mission creep? is one of which we so far have unsatisfying theoretical understanding. This dissertation project sets out to explore the ways in which the "darker sides" of globalization come to inform contemporary urban public policymaking and how this might play into the restructuring of global-local political orders. The project includes a case study of New York City and its local strategies on climate change and counterterrorism and in this paper theoretical points of departures and methodological considerations are being discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the philosophical tenets of neoliberalism have altered the spatial structures of the international system over the last four decades. Drawing upon the work of Henri Lefebvre, the paper brings out the relationship between neoliberal political philosophy and its spatial expression. Lefebvre argued that every historical period has its own 'spatial code', and that every successful social ideology produces a new form of space. This paper argues that neoliberalism's spatial code has generated a set of spatial structures that are in conflict with the bounded territorial spaces of the international system of modernity. It examines new forms of social spatial arrangements emerging in this period, such as global city networks and trans-territorial diasporas. It asks what the implications of this spatial legacy may be for the territorial nation-state and for the wider international system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pakistan's nuclear weapons program generates intense concern in Washington and among its allies for a variety of reasons. To name only a few, there are concerns about the potential of nuclear war with India, about proliferation, about Pakistan's impact on the global arms control regime (most recently illustrated by its stance on the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty), about an arms race in SW Asia, about state failure, about military control over its nuclear weapons, and about acquisition of the weapons (or fissile material) by Islamist militants. These concerns are legitimate to be sure. But a closer examination of the program itself and the environment in which that program nests raises a larger concern: the likelihood of synergistic interactions among these variables leading to even greater danger to US security. This manifestation of unintended outcomes cannot be predicted, but the way in which these dangers arise can be better understood. To this end, this paper examines the environment in which Pakistan's program nests, what sorts of dangers may arise in this environment, and how these dangers might interact synergistically, leading to even greater peril. The resulting hazards are more difficult to understand, less predictable, and thus pose an even greater threat to US security than generally acknowledged. Because the threats generated are more likely to have unintended consequences, it is more important than ever to plan for coherent, interconnected responses. This paper examines the environment in which Pakistan's nuclear weapons program exists, key elements of the program itself, and then discusses several forecasting tools that are available to help understand the interaction of the various variables, synergistic outcomes, and the implications of these outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even as the Bush administration has adopted a distinctly unilateral and realpolitik approach to foreign policy, it has defended its actions on grounds of restoring democracy and respect for human rights in the states where it intervenes, going so far as to incorporate the language of political liberty into the title of the Iraqi invasion operation, Operation Iraqi Freedom. But what do we know more generally about the actual role of human rights and democracy in nations? foreign policies? In particular, under what conditions does the status of human rights in one state affect other states? policies toward it? And to what extent, if any, do aid donors take human rights into account in aid decisions relative to other criteria?Inconsistencies are often noted between public commitment to aid policy based on good governance and the often-made criticism that foreign assistance often seems to follow trade rather than democracy. My research demonstrates that under certain conditions, this inconsistency is not due to intentional prevarication at the level of public statements, but rather due to two key factors. First, a substantial gulf exists between the goals and perceptions of those who make foreign aid policy at the highest levels and those responsible for executing its disbursement. Second, in some conditions a sort of reverse logic exists that results in states with lower levels of democracy intentionally recieving more aid.Decisions about aid are fundamentally governed by a calculus on the part of states who want to maximize gains from trade with recipient states when there are sufficient gains to be had, but may nod to principle when there are not. In fact, there is a tipping point at which we can expect recipient democracy to come into play. These hypotheses are empirically assessed through detailed content analysis of correspondence surrounding aid decisions in both the UK and Canada over the past twenty-five years. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, it has become common for scholars in the field of comparative revolution to use the term Mafiocracy when describing governments which may collapse at a moments notice (Wickham-Crowley, 1992). When faced with cross class alliances, mafiocratic regimes are swept away opening the door for revolution which can destabilize international politics (Walt, 1996). In this case the language of crime permeates the reality of regime change and domestic and international instability. From anarchic images in realist theory to envisioning Saddam Hussein as a mafia Don, crime and politics have been linked. This paper examines important films about organized crime and their implications for international political theory. The Godfather trilogy with its complex mixture of cultures of violence rooted in Sicily and political realism in New York, Goodfellas which explores organized violence vs. random violence in mafia organizations, and Reservoir Dogs with its dark visions of distrust in criminal enterprise, form the heart of this paper. A final section deals with the Sopranos emphasizing the evolution of violence as it intersects with the therapeutic, family values, and a functioning legal system. The paper is designed for both scholars and teachers. Understanding crime films offer interesting perspectives on the nature of international politics. Crime films also are an interesting and creative way to introduce students to a wide variety of international political theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the quantitative conflict literature employs data sets that draw a large portion of their cases from 1945-1990. This historical period coincides with the U.S.-Soviet bipolar competition and security arrangements associated with that competition. A debate within the democratic peace literature has emerged between those who view the democratic peace as a general phenomenon, and those who see democracy?s effect on international conflict as largely a function of the particular circumstances of the Cold War alignment. The critics of a general relationship between democracy and war focus specifically on the role of the United States as a leader of one of the bi-polar alliance blocks The possibility that observed relationships between democracy and war could be dependent on the particular historical circumstances of the Cold War raises the question: To what extent are other empirical findings about international conflict also a function of the hegemonic influence exercised by the superpowers during period? Using ordinal logistic regression to examine the pattern of third party joining this paper re-examines the extent to which the relationship between democracy and intervention as well as the relationships between variables commonly used to explain third party interventions in the conflict literature, such as proximity, power status, democracy, trade and alliances, are a function of the intervention choices of the United States during the Cold War. The paper finds that the intervention choice of the United States is by far the most important predictor of the intervention choices of other third parties to interstate wars. And that accounting for the intervention choices of the United States ?explains? away much of the general relationships observed in earlier studies. Interestingly enough though reduced in substantive importance, a statistical the relationship between shared democracy and joining remains even after accounting for U.S. intervention choice in this period. This finding suggests that the relationship between shared democracy and third party joining is not entirely dependent upon the exercise of American leadership during the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing American dominance and power in the world has frustrated various countries, societies, and individuals, and some have argued that this anger at American hegemony was the cause of September 11th. These people, such as Benjamin Barber, argue that Western cultural and economic imperialism are reshaping the world at the expense of various other cultures. As the American empire grows, it spreads its culture throughout the world, creating a more homogeneous world. This paper will focus on the growth of the American empire by examining American foreign policy and the use of force during the Clinton administration. From 1993 to 2000, the U.S. intervened or initiated the use of force in several places, including the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, Somalia, Iraq, and Haiti. Why did the Clinton administration make these foreign policy decisions? Was it part of an attempt to spread American hegemony throughout the world or not? Or, as many have argued, were Clinton’s foreign policy decisions a result of his domestic problems and his own personal ambitions and goals? This paper will seek to understand what motivated President Clinton’s foreign policy decisions to initiate the use of force or to intervene in the intrastate conflicts of other countries from 1993 to 2000. In order to answer this question this paper will focus on one possible theory?diversionary war theory. Diversionary war theory is based on the idea that leaders of nation-states will use foreign conflict involvement to divert domestic attention away from internal problems. Many have criticized this theory, including Blainey 1998 and Levy 1989, but others have found evidence of a moderate link between variables like leader popularity and the diversionary use of force, such as Ostrom and Job 1986, James and Oneal 1991, and Morgan and Bickers 1992. Clinton faced a number of domestic distractions during his Presidency, most significantly his ongoing difficulties involving his alleged affair, and he may have felt the need to use foreign policy to divert attention away from these problems. Clinton has also has been quoted a number of times as saying that domestic politics is more important to him than international politics, and he may have used foreign policy to divert attention away from his domestic problems. This paper will focus on three specific independent variables: presidential approval, economic measures, and the media focus during the six months prior to the decision to use force or intervene. As the U.S. continues its dominance in the world, it is important to understand the motivations behind American foreign policy. Many people in the world today are less than satisfied with the U.S. hegemonic role in the world, because some of them believe that the U.S. is acting only in its own self-interest with no regard for how their actions affect the rest of the world. It is important to understand the reasons behind American foreign policy in order to determine whether the U.S. is a selfish and self-interested nation. This is a small step towards that goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines writings on the subjects of international relations and lasting peace published by American, British and French citizens from the beginning of World War I through the foundation and reinforcement of the League of Nations (1914-1924). International relations is a relatively young academic discipline. It’s emergence coincides with the beginning of our short twentieth century and can be understood as one of the key consequences World War I’s impact on Western societies. The creation of international frameworks supposed to ensure a peaceful evolution of inter-state relations is a well-known subject. On the other hand, historians and international relations specialists have barely begun to study how citizens envisioned the forging of a new world order. Yet, citizens believed that both the tremendous human losses suffered during the war and the evolution of democracy in Western societies validated their participation in international affairs, traditionally the private domain of a small elite. From 1914 to 1924 hundreds of texts, pamphlets and academic monographs expressed such non-official views on international relations. These writings are surprisingly diverse in their interpretation of lasting peace and international relations. Beyond the conventional labels of idealist or utopian which are commonly used by their opponents to marginalize a discourse generally critical of the mainstream view, one discovers that the citizens who wrote on these topics were neither dreamers nor unaware of the realities of international affairs. Some points of view are based on religious or moral convictions, while others illustrate conservative, progressive or revolutionary political opinions. These authors are often defined as pacifists, although this qualification seems simplistic. For instance, several authors do not condemn war and recognize power politics as a fact. Most of them supported the Allied victory over Germany as a basis for redefining the international relations. Within the context of the ISA Conference on Hegemony and its Discontents, this paper will analyse the first major expressions of non-state actors aiming to challenge the established order of international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent non-state or non-governmental actors (NGOs) can lay legitimate claim to represent and articulate interests within domestic civil society is a widely discussed theoretical and empirical question in political science. Similar questions have started to be raised within International Relations, in particular with respect to international advocacy by transnational NGOs and issue-networks, often driven by the same imperatives of funding and recognition as their domestic counterparts. The literature on global governance does not, however, yet have a well-developed body of empirical research on which to base any judgements, and the research agenda is in its infancy. This paper will contribute to this debate through a focused examination of one set of non-governmental actors, those associated with the nascent International Action Network on Small Arms. After first developing a robust social map of the network’s participants, the paper will examine how the activities of network members can be understood against the broader backdrop of activities by states and international organizations in this issue area. Ultimately, the goal will be to analyze how transnational NGO activities shape and frame, or are shaped and framed by, the distribution of political and economic power in world politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper discusses the international efforts to restore order to Somalia in 1992. It examines how intra-state conflict and state collapse complicate international conflict resolution and peacebuilding strategies. In Somalia, peacekeeping peacemaking was followed by peace enforcement. The paper’s key arguement is that this assertiveness undermined the slow progress being made in diplomatic peacemaking.The nature of hegemony is also important to this inquiry. My paper examines the way the international community, led by the west, sought to establish order in Somalia, and the local responses to these efforts. Related issues include the effectiveness and relevance in so-called failed states of UN and non-UN peace operations. In Somalia, civil society had disintegrated, and I will discuss how this slowed the process of ending the still-simmering conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will address the issue of change in international institutions and governance brought about by the global war on terrorism. It will apply the concept of new multilateralism as an analytical tool in order to map out an emerging qualitatively different approach to international organization. New multilateralism is most obvious and pronounced in Europe whose regional order traditionally has been highly institutionalized. European regional integration unfolding within the institutional domain of EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) will serve as a critical case study of the trend towards the establishment of new patterns of governance in the international system. The argument will proceed in the following way. First, the concept of new multilateralism will be discussed in reference to John Ruggie’s original definition of multilateralism as a generic principled institutional form in international life. Second, the paper will explore recent developments in the foreign policy domain of the European Union as an institutionalized intergovernmental political process. It will address the trend towards flexible forms of commitment and participation under the CFSP mechanism as an instance of the new multilateralism in international relations. The new multilateralism of the post-9/11 period, this paper will argue, continues the historical tradition of classical multilateralism by reflecting (in Ruggie’s words) American hegemony rather than American hegemony and by revealing the adaptive and reproductive capacities of international institutions. Similarly to classical multilateralism, it does not necessarily generate formal organizations but continues to respond to a demand for institutionalization of relations in the international system. In contrast to classical multilateralism, new multilateralism is based on a network of bilateral arrangements. In the spirit of multilateralism, it evokes a principled code of conduct, however, outside existing international institutions: it creates coalitions of the willing. New multilateralism is bilateral in approach and multilateral in cooperative action and outcomes. Thus, it accelerates transformation rather than stabilize international relations (which classical multilateralism did). It substitutes governance outcomes resulting from the existing universalist multi-purpose international institutions by single-purpose short-term arrangements in a variable geometry of participating countries. Without substantively changing the standards of international organization, new multilateralism reverses the attained level and patterns of complicated multilateral diplomacy. It is based on straightforward means-ends bilateral relationships resulting in flexible multilateral coalitions. Coalitions of the willing are increasingly being established as a multilateral response to international threats. They have become a source of governance in the international system. From the perspective of European regional integration, the continued institutionalization of a possibility for enhanced foreign policy and defense cooperation under CFSP, in parallel to the consolidation of strategic bilateral relationships and participation in ad hoc international coalitions, exemplifies a new pattern of regional relations produced by new multilateralism. The Convention on the Future of Europe reflects and reinforces that trend by creating new opportunities for variable-geometry coalitions within an otherwise highly structured institutional mechanism. This example indicates that the nature of European and with it, international, governance is changing. Regions no longer represent a formally institutionalized geopolitical environment. They are becoming increasingly defined in terms of threats, vulnerabilities, and capacities for response by flexible ad hoc security arrangements. The paper will conclude that the coalitions of the willing have emerged as a new multilateral source of authority and legitimacy in the international system beyond international organizations. Arguably, this change in the pattern of international governance is essentially deeper than the nature and scope of institutional change brought about by the end of the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The name of the 45th Annual ISA Convention reminds of Joseph Stiglitz’s well-known book Globalization and its Discontents and makes one wonder whether globalization is synonymous, or is leading to, hegemony - of who, over whom, of what kind? The ongoing debates in the Russian social sciences are focusing on these issues, but the discourses they produce remain cloaked largely in mystery for much of the scientific maintream. This paper, based on the results of several large-scale research projects conducted at the initiative of Mikhail S. Gorbachev and his Foundation for Socio-Economic, International and Political Studies and carried out by a prominent group of Russian scholars, analyses the responses Russian political sociology and sociology of international relations provide to the challenges of globalization considered in the context of the New World Order, the transformation of power relations in world politics, and the emergence of new centers of hegemony in global governance. The paper demonstrates that the main thematic lines of analysis of the complexities of globalization in Russia are influenced by the need for the country which used to be a former world superpower to reassess its current position and role and to adjust to the drastic global transformations of which it has been one of the major causes. It provides evidence in support of the claim that the concepts of national sovereignty, self-determination, and political self-determination in particular, are the key instruments in the analysis of Russia’s role and place in the globalizing world. Drawing parallels between the Russian globalization studies and the seminal writings produced by Western authors, it addresses the issues of academic preponderance and diversity, domination and exclusion in the currents of international political sociology, considering the ways in which relations of ruling shape scholarly discourses. The three parts of the paper outline the major questions, or thematic blocks, connected to the study of globalization in Russia. The first part presents how globalization is defined, how it is linked to the issues of power and hegemony in global governance, and what are its main characteristics and contradictions as perceived in Russian contemporary social thought. The second part reveals the theoretical reaction to the globalization challenges resulting in the development of the concept of Russia’s political and economic self-determination, which is applied to the analysis of the country’s behavior in the globalizing world. The third part presents the critical analysis of Russia’s role and place in globalization. It elaborates on the theoretical debates about the forced integration into the international economic, political and informational structures, making an enormous effort and jumping into the wagon of the current winners, versus a messianic attitude declaring Russia’s necessity to take the lead of the losers of globalization, the discontents opposing the trends of global hegemony. Stressing the increasingly significant role of corporations and corporatism, which in Russia takes the form of oligarchic rule, it considers the impacts of Russia’s choice of authoritarianism or democracy on the future world order according to various scenarios developed by the Russian scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relations between the European Union and Romania have recently deteriorated, posing serious risks for Romania?s aim of obtaining membership in 2007. This paper proposes five partly linked and complementary explanations for this crisis. Each explanation is briefly presented and preliminarily assessed in this draft paper. The intention is to improve our understanding of the current crisis in the larger context of the EU enlargement project and the difficulties of post-communist transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) stood steadfast with the United States in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. On 12 September 2001, less than 24 hours after the terrorist attacks against the United States, the alliance invoked Article 5 of the Washington Treaty for the first time in its history. Since then, NATO has taken a variety of steps to engage more fully in the global war on terrorism, including a declaration that tacking terrorism was NATO’s new mission. On a more concrete level, alliance members adopted a package of measures during the Prague Summit in November 2002 that are designed to strengthen NATO’s preparedness and ability to take on the challenges associated with terrorism. But beyond the rhetoric and posturing, is the alliance really ready?in terms of having the appropriate command and force structure?to tackle this new threat? If the last major alliance effort to address a change in the threat environment is any indicator, NATO may not be ready to decisively face down terrorism for quite some time. In the 1991 Strategic Concept, NATO recognized the significant changes in the threat environment brought about by the end of the Cold War. New threats, ethnic and religious strife chief among them, were noted by the alliance in public documents and pronouncements. Accordingly, the alliance recognized that new command and force structures would be necessary to meet the new threats. Nevertheless, it took the alliance another 12 years before it had those command and force structures?centered on NATO Rapid Deployment Corps (NRDCs)?in place to deal with new post-Cold War security challenges. Why did this change in command and force structures take so long after the alliance recognized the changed security environment? My paper will argue that although external threat factors initiate reviews of NATO doctrine and force structure, the outcomes of those reviews are delayed and decisively shaped by organizational behavior and bureaucratic politics factors. By extending this model to the current focus on the terrorism?arguably as great a watershed in the threat environment as the end of the Cold War?the clearest implication is that NATO may not be prepared to respond to this new security challenge in the short run because it may lack appropriate processes, structures, and forces even though it recognizes the inadequacy of its existing security tools. Extending the model further, the paper will argue that NATO is likely to stumble through the short term, employing ad hoc or stopgap tactics and solutions as was seen in the alliance’s response to Balkans crises in the 1990s. Like state actors in the international environment, NATO seems ready and able to fight the last war, but not necessarily the next one. The paper will argue that if NATO wishes to remain relevant to security in the twenty-first century and provide for European security?particularly in the war on terrorism?it will have to develop more effective means for evolving its doctrine and its force structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does unipolarity select for unilateralism? Theories that derive the behavior of a hegemonic state -and particularly with respect to unilateralism - exclusively from the distribution of relative power are notoriously underdetermined; neorealism suggests that leading states use asymmetries in power to their unilateral advantage, whereas the hegemony literature suggests that leading states leverage potentiall temporary advantage into locking in a favorable institutionalized status quo. This paper argues that the current American response these competing international logics is mediated by political-intellectual traditions about American power. The paper will address why certain unilateral/multilateralist foreign policy traditions are priveleged at certain times, and how these traditions determine - or provide a casual condition for - how the United States responds to structural pressures towards international institutions and cooperation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guatemala has been faced with a daunting set of issues since the signing of the country’s historical peace accords in December 1996. The prospects for consolidating peace and democracy have depended on the successful reform of political, legal, and military institutions as well as the re-negotiation of political participation, in particular equal and meaningful participation for historically marginalized groups. The hemisphere’s multilateral forum, the Organization of American States (OAS) has been supporting these reform efforts through various peacebuilding initiatives. Particularly relevant to the Guatemalan context is the fact that the OAS has recently expanded its peacebuilding and democracy strengthening agenda to include conflict prevention programs.  It is during the phase following the signing of peace accords that activities aimed at preventing a renewed outbreak of violent conflict are considered especially valuable. With this in mind, the Organization established a program to help Guatemalans address ongoing tensions and political disputes, particularly related to the implementation of the accords, before they spiral into destructive violence.  The program entitled Culture of Dialogue: Development of Resources for Peacebuilding in Guatemala (OAS-PROPAZ)  has focussed on strengthening the capacities of governmental, civic, and community institutions to manage and resolve disputes in collaborative ways. My paper argues that the PROPAZ programme represents an innovative and commendable initiative who’s achievements can be attributed to a confluence of factors: the right moment in time, the right staff, its fluid and adaptable nature. However, I conclude that it is unlikely that such a program can be easily replicated for a number of reasons which I outline in the last section of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early days of the Cold War, prominent students of American foreign policy firmly rejected the notion that the United States could initiate preventive wars against its adversaries. Preventive war is a persistent theme in the history of international politics. Unlike a conflict fought over a specific disputed issue, preventive war is fought to prevent the erosion of relative power to a rising adversary (even though that adversary does not pose an imminent threat). The logic of preventive war simply asserts that it is better to fight a war today under more favorable circumstances than to face a possible war in the future after an adversary has achieved military gains that raise the likely costs and risks of war for the dominant state. Despite the apparent rationality of initiating military conflict under these conditions, preventive war presents serious normative problems that have traditionally been considered too odious for a democratic state to overcome. Morgenthau, Kennan, Brodie, and Kissinger, among others, all argued that for democracies, launching preventive wars is taboo. More recent scholarship claims that no democracy has ever fought a preventive war because democratic public opinion simply considers preventive war, in the absence of a clear impending threat, to be morally abhorrent (even against a morally abhorrent adversary). ..ASA-Events of the past year, however, fundamentally challenge this claim about democracy and preventive war. Less than a year after President Bush declared that America would not tolerate unbalanced dictators seeking weapons of mass destruction, the United States was engaged in a preventive war against Iraq that ended with the destruction of the Iraqi regime and American occupation. Coupled with the president’s National Security Strategy of September 2002 that articulated a general vision of fighting pre-emptive wars in such cases, this event generated broad speculation and debate over whether America would turn its military might next against Syria, Iran or North Korea. In this period of weak international constraints on how America uses its power abroad, the potential for domestic constraints becomes crucial for understanding the degree to which American hegemony will be restrained in coming years. This paper examines several aspects of this issue. First, it measures the extent of anti-preventive war sentiment that actually exists in the United States as reflected in Congress and among the American public. Evidence for this question was generated from content analysis of the congressional debate over war with Iraq and public opinion surveys before the war. Second, it examines a related question: does congressional and public support for war with Iraq mean that the logic of preventive war has fully trumped the normative limits that may have prevented the United States from engaging in this particular form of war in the past? The paper presents evidence showing that domestic support for war cannot be explained outside the context of the terror attacks of September 11. It was not the purported threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction development that motivated majority support, but the link the administration drew between Iraq and terrorists that moved many to accept war. Third, the paper examines whether 9/11 has produced a shift in domestic attitudes about preventive war that extends beyond the Iraq case. To what extent do members of Congress and the public accept the general logic of preventive war as articulated in the administration’s pre-emption strategy? To what degree does anti-preventive war sentiment still exist in the U.S. after the Iraq war? To what extent are members of Congress and the public willing to support the logic of preventive war in other cases? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically engages with recent efforts to frame the global AIDS pandemic not just as a health and development issue, but also as an international security issue. The paper demonstrates that such political activism, contrary to the beliefs of many of its advocates, is not merely a ?progressive? attempt to transcend the limits of the narrow international security agenda revolving around the deployment of organized armed force; it is also an activity part and parcel of a new biopolitical economy of power that emerged in Europe at the end of the eighteenth century around the government of ?life?, and which is currently being spread globally in the name of HIV/AIDS. The paper then raises the question of whether this biopolitical dimension to the securitization of AIDS renders the latter a futile strategy for resisting the global marginalization of HIV/AIDS, in that it only further entangles the worst affected countries in a complex set of biopolitical power relations that civil society and grass-roots activists, in turn, would do best to actively resist. The paper?s overall argument is that the biopolitical nature of the securitization of AIDS risks bringing new normalizing and racist social practices into play, but that these ethical dangers must not necessarily lead grass roots activists to completely reject the ongoing securitization of AIDS. Rather, the key question that emerges from a biopolitical analysis of the securitization of AIDS is how the latter can be advanced in a manner that minimizes these ethical dangers, suggestions for which are explored in the paper?s conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Events around the globe since the end of the East-West ideological rivalry have been those of conflicts, many of which have precipitated unfettered violation of the sanctity of state sovereignty in the definitive character of Pax Ameriocana - an American centredness - often clothed in the garb of ‘Multilateralism’. The situation has caught the world - especially Third World countries - in the middle of a miscontrued duel between the United States and its allies with so much power and the rest with too little ‘sense’; such that betrays earlier promises and expectations of freedom, mutual respect and justice associated with the ‘new world order’. Among the several questions that thus beg for answers are: What were the underlying features of the vision of the ‘new world order’? How have they been preserved or sabotaged? Can genuine peace be realised under the present unipolar world that is structured in the definitive cahracter of Pax Americana? What kind of memory does this give about the defunct Cold War world order? To what extent has the image of the United Nations suffered a severe banter in the light of contemporary events in international affairs? What is the nature of the discontents the situation generates in Africa? To what extent does the continent absorb a disproportionate share of the burden of the ‘new world order’? This paper seeks to interrogate the incresing failue of the once eulogiosed ‘new world order’ that is now left in the wounds of American centredness with a view to showing how Africa absorbs a disproportionate burden of its hegemony and power construction. The paper intends to do this by combining theoretical and policy analysis with reference to specific incidents around the globe. Even though it does not intend to prescribe solutions, the paper will nevertheless advance an informed guess about the future, such that will lead to a better understanding of the hidden pious talk the ‘new world order’ depicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combination of globalization, migration and new technologies creates the structural conditions for the emergence of transnational networks, non-state actors and other entities that form polities beyond the state. This paper examines this phenomenon and explores the implications for IR theories of national security. If non-state actors have the means to employ force and violence, including the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), what are the implications for our models of the international system as a system composed of states? The paper argues for conceptualizing the international system as a global society, and suggests that factors that factors that enhance security at the domestic level may also enhance security at the global level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The English School as a Scientific Research Enterprise:This paper evaluates the English School (ES) as a prominent approach to the study of International Relations (IR) as a ?scientific research enterprise? (James, International Relations and Scientific Progress, 2002). Analysis begins with introduction of a ?continuum of aggregation? that conveys a given scientific research enterprise, such as the English School, at different conceptual levels. The ES?s axioms, along with its negative and positive heuristics, are identified and evaluated on the basis of classic and more recent works from Wight, Bull and others. Conclusions and prospects for further development of the ES complete the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the relationship between theory and practice in international relations by examining the recent environmental security literature and its ability to guide in the formation of policy. At the end of the Cold War, international relations scholars began to challenge the traditional understanding of national security. This work argued against the narrow focus on military weapons as threats to national security by pointing to the threats induced by natural resource shortages and global warming. These authors argued that resource scarcity and global warming produced negative economic and political pressures leading to regional instability. Since its introduction, the environmental security literature has gone through three generation of scholarship, each improving our understanding of the relationship between the environment and national security. Despite this, all three generations have not remedied important shortcomings within this literature that weakens our ability to draw policy prescriptions from its conclusions. First, environmental security scholars have focused on an economic understanding of the relationship between the environment and security. In other words, they argue that given a shortage of critical resources -whether it is water, air, soil, or oil- nations will face a national security threat. But, as this paper will argue, the physical environment a nation finds itself in will present a national security threat regardless of the abundance of a resource. To appreciate the ecological interdependence a nation finds itself in, the paper considers the example of international rivers. The second critique of this literature is its focus on environmental security as a source of conflict. In reality the physical environment can be a source of cooperation or conflict. The national security threat induced from ecological interdependence can be so costly, that even enemies are induced to cooperate. Consider for example the stable cooperation between India and Pakistan over the Indus River system. This cooperation has survived through several wars, numerous border clashes, and even nuclear rivalry. And finally, this paper will demonstrate that the ecological interdependence created among nations can become a weapon used to signal discontent to a neighboring nation. To demonstrate this, the paper will draw on the use of rivers as weapons by riparian nations. In the process of analyzing and critiquing the environmental security literature, the paper will draw on the experience of the nations sharing the Indus, Ganges, Jordan, and Euphrates Rivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S. foreign policy has always been controversial. Recently, however, the controversy has intensified. American actions in Iraq in particular, and more generally its seemingly growing willingness to act militarily on the international stage without the prior endorsement of U.N. Resolutions (as in Kosovo and Afghanistan) have exacerbated the controversies, even among America’s closest allies, and Americans themselves. These controversies have been further aggravated by the inability of American officials to elaborate a clear framework for American foreign policy, including the criteria by which decisions to intervene are taken. By consequence, U.S. policy winds up looking ad hoc, reactive, even capricious, and this perception reinforces worries that American policy is destabilizing the international political system. This paper offers a paradigm, bearing the seemingly oxymoronic title pluralist imperialism, which purports to explain the rationale behind recent U.S. interventions and to provide a basis for predicting future U.S. actions. The background for the pluralist imperialist paradigm is the recognition that while the U.N. and other multilateral international institutions are extremely important, there are real limits on what we can expect such institutions to contribute. In the face of some crises, international institutions can be paralysed by their political structure (as in Kosovo), or by their limited capabilities and resources (as in part, for example, in Rwanda). In short, international institutions need to be supplemented by the strong and independent actions of individual states, especially leading states, and most particularly the leading state. American foreign policy should be understood as emphasizing not only the privileges, but also the core minimal obligations of state sovereignty. Four obligations in particular have been reflected in recent U.S. policy: (1) states must not engage in gross violations of human rights; (2) states must not foment terrorism; (3) states must not develop weapons of mass destruction; and (4) states must not invade other states without just cause (where just cause is defined as obligations 1 to 3) Where states violate an (or several) obligation(s), the U.S. retains the right to suspend respect for their sovereignty, and to intervene to change the government. Where it does intervene, the U.S. will work to establish democracy and then withdraw. As long as states respect their core, minimum obligations they may be of any type ? the U.S. foreign policy embraces moral and cultural pluralism. When they violate minimum obligations, however, the U.S. retains the right to remove the offending government and establish democracy ? it embraces a minimal imperialist role. In this way, it can supplement the U.N. by encouraging respect for minimal obligations, while at the same time respecting moral and cultural diversity. Finally, I argue in the paper that these minimal obligations provide a useful framework for explaining U.S.-led interventions in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As scholars of international politics, we have spent much of the last 10 years arguing that the world will soon be multipolar (Layne, 1993; Schwarz and Layne, 2002). Relatively little scholarly effort has been devoted to understanding the current strange world of American hegemony. This is not entirely surprising: our most basic concepts and theories were based on a multipolar world; these were later supplemented by understanding bipolarity. This unipolar moment might not last, but it seems there may be some wishful thinking involved as well ? not policymakers and theorists alike may miss the Cold War, as the hegemony of learned theories tries to impose itself on reality. This paper confronts unipolarity directly by revisiting elements of Waltz’s Neorealism. Waltz was primarily fascinated with the effects of bipolarity, mentioning the possibility of unipolarity only briefly. This paper extends Waltz’s theory into the realm of unipolarity by considering the impact of a unipolar distribution of capabilities on international structure. In the context of this unipolar theoretical perspective, this paper applies concepts at the heart of Neorealism, chainganging and buckpassing, to the era of global terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role small and mid-size states have played in initiating and developing the landmine-ban issue, which eventually changed hegemon behavior toward landmines. It analyzes how small and mid-size states were able to generate international action toward support of the Ottawa Treaty banning antipersonnel landmines, which marked the first time a weapon in widespread use has been banned. The paper makes two interrelated arguments. First, small and mid-size states worked among themselves and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which helped the landmine issue gain international legal legitimacy, and intense media and public attention in order to counter hegemon opposition. Second, small and mid-size states changed hegemon perceptions toward the legality of landmine use by creating an alternative, majority voting based negotiating framework outside the UN based consensus-voting system. In comparison, most disarmament treaties are negotiated within the UN system, at the behest of hegemons and exclude small and mid-size states from important roles in the negotiating process. These arguments address the broader question of the small and mid-size state role in initiating and controlling the international arms control agenda by showing the potential conditions of how they can get governments, including hegemons, to prohibit weapons that are heavily used and which retain a military utility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances and tests hypotheses that link state behavior to domestic and international factors. The intervening link is worldviews, the dominant (for purposes of this conference, one could say hegemonic) mode of thought by the national leadership. This paper suggests that a relatively benign international environment and a pattern of domestic coalition rule will lead to the rise of leaders who are prone to view the world as more cooperative, believing states primarily seek security. Leaders with such a worldview are in turn more likely to support multilateral regimes and peace operations. A more hostile international environment and a pattern of domestic unitary rule will lead to the rise of leaders who are prone to view the world as less cooperative, believing states primarily seek power. Leaders with such a worldview are in turn less likely to support multilateral regimes or peace operations. Following the approach used in the early days of democratic peace theory, this paper sets aside the process by which worldviews shape that relationship. Before investing in the hard work of process tracing, this paper tests whether or not there is a correlation between two independent variables (the level of competition in government and the hostility of the international environment) and the two dependent variables of support for multilateral regimes and for international peace operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at analyzing the recent changes in the US foreign doctrine and Brazil’s strategy of international relations under thenew government that took power in January 2003. The U.S. and Brazil agendas and strategies are discussed in light of the FTAA process. Several questions are addressed in the paper, including: How can the ganeda be reconciled to accommodate national interests and at the same time to keep the momentum of the FTAA process? How can US hegemony be accommodated in a more cooperative hemisphere? How does Mercosur fit in with the FTAA project? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging from the globalization debate, the second wave in comparative political economy literature (Hall and Soskice, Scharpf and Schmidt, Schmidt) has emphasized the resilience of divergent varieties of capitalism in the face of pressures of convergence. This paper contributes to this literature, while critically examining some its assumptions. Taking national response strategies to constitute the dependent variable and the pressures of international competitiveness as the independent variable, three questions are analyzed. First, are the divergent trajectories in macroeconomic policy since the 1970s indeed responses to external pressures? Second, what role does globalization play as compared to the role of foreign influence in the form of policy transfer and the diffusion of ideas through epistemic communities? Third, in assessing such response strategies, is it fruitful to distinguish between models and varieties of capitalism, or are there indications functional convergence on a redefined role of the state, a competition state model? Is the functional output of coordinated capitalist systems thus roughly similar to that of liberal capitalist systems? At the microlevel, this neo-institutionally inspired analysis examines the role of key actors, the institutional configuration of the political system, central politico-economic interest groups, and other civil society actors in the implementation of embedded liberalism. The analysis drawn on evidence from a diverse sample of previously understudied countries, including two countries that have embraced liberal market economics (Chile, New Zealand) and two others that have traditionally been associated with Social Democratic neocorporatist economic governance (Austria and Norway). While much effort has been previously devoted to sketching contours of globalization, relatively scant attention has been paid to such response strategies and the question as to whether some, if not most, of the impetus for change originates domestically, rather than at the global level. The paper addresses this set of issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perceptions of resolve?the willingness of a state to incur costs to achieve an objective?are an important part of international politics. In deciding to initiate hostilities, for example, a potential challenger will take into account not only its adversary’s capabilities but also the adversary’s resolve. Sometimes states correctly perceive adversary signals of resolve; other times they make a very costly mistake. This paper sets out to provide an explanation of perceptions of adversary resolve rooted in pluralist theory and the scholarship of Robert Jervis. Perceiving resolve correctly is difficult because states often send mixed signals about their resolve. Signaling resolve is complicated by the struggle between domestic political forces with varying power in the domestic arena and conflicting preferences on whether a contested good should be defended. States trying to correctly perceive others’ resolve cope by projecting key features of their own domestic polity (e.g., the relative power of different actors) onto their adversary’s polity. States perceive the correct level of resolve when there is rough symmetry between the relevant aspects of the perceiver’s polity and the defender’s polity. The paper applies process tracing methods to primary and secondary sources on Italy’s perception of British resolve prior to the Italo-Ethopian War (1935); and France’s perceptions of Austrian resolve during war termination negotiations (1813). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthony A. Loh Department of Political Science Vanderbilt University (615) 343-6046 Email: anthony.a.loh@vanderbilt.edu The events of 9/11 helped expose the underlying incompatibilities between an emerging American hegemony and the Westphalian system of international relations. In much of International Relations literature, the assumption is that the international system is given, while the distribution of power can take the form of multipolarity, bipolarity and unipolarity. Yet in the aftermath of the Iraq war of 2003, the United States has clearly consolidated its post-Cold War triumphant gains in political, economic and military leverages over the rest of the world, including its allies in Western Europe. It has sought to fill the void left by the former Soviet Union. A new systems structure appears to be emerging that is centered on the United States, and anti-hegemonial coalitions that could sufficiently balance it are becoming more difficult to assemble, although sub-state actors like Al Qaeda cell groups have risen to attempt to check the hegemon through insidious means and transnational networks. It is time for Waltzian claims to receive yet another nuanced revision or perhaps a complete rejection. At the highest level, systems structure may no longer be anarchical, whereas at the lowest (sub-state) level, it remains to be so. This paper explores the significance of these structural changes for international politics. There has been a near-explosion of IR literature on the United States becoming a new imperium. The central question addressed here is how this new American imperium differs from traditional-type territorial empires and what is its significance for U.S.-East Asian relations in the 21st century. The paper looks at the potential shifts in U.S. policies in South and North Korea, Japan, Singapore, Philippines, Taiwan, and China. These East Asian states have been watching closely the military and political outcome of the 2003 Iraqi war. The implications of American unilateralism ? with its doctrines on regime change and strategic preemption ? worry them. Some of them are authoritarian regimes and are regarded by the United States as proliferators of weapons of mass destruction. The shift in post-9/11 U.S. strategy from containing peer competitors to dealing with terrorist threats have lifted some pressures on China, but the neoconservative agenda to remake the international order will be sure to bear on regional security and stability. How will the United States deal with North Korea in light of the Iraqi campaign of 2003? Some East Asian states have already seen the need to revise their traditional relationships with the United States. South Korea, in its drive for reunification, might abandon its reliance on U.S. security umbrella and turn to China as the new power broker. Japan, America’s staunchest ally in the region, might choose to remilitarize rather than continue to rely on the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty. Still other East Asian states might be polarized into pro-U.S. and anti-U.S. camps, especially since there is little cohesiveness among them to begin with. The limits of U.S. military power are particularly felt in the East Asian context. Yet the question that concerns all of East Asia is how the U.S., with its global military supremacy, would exercise its political rule as a neoimperial power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When, how and why are the chairmen of multilateral negotiations capable of wielding political influence? This paper presents a theory of formal leadership in international cooperation, and tests this theory on cases drawn from trade, security, environment, and regional cooperation. The paper explores the conditions under which states confer responsibilities of agenda management, brokerage, and representation on the chairmanship, as well as the conditions under which these powers can be used to influence the efficiency and distributional consequences of international negotiations. The paper speaks to ongoing debates in IR on the demand for and supply of leadership in international cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]