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An Operational Code is a prism that influences the actor's perceptions and diagnoses of the flow of political events, his definitions and estimates of particular situations... [and] provides norms, standards, guidelines that influence the actor's choice of strategy and tactics, his structuring and weighing of alternative courses of action. Such a belief system influences but does not unilaterally determine decision making; it is an important but not the only variable that shapes decision-making behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although violent threats are progressively more sophisticated, frequent, and deadly, this paper will argue that the root causes are not new. Ralph Bunche posited that to ensure peace, the principles and practice of true justice, equality, human rights, and democracy must be secured. However, instead of creating the foundation for enduring peace, we are witnessing the rise of inequality within and between nations. Indeed, even as the number of political regimes classified as ?democracies? increases, economic rights are deteriorating and social cleavages are growing within the current hegemonic order. Following Bunche?s intellectual tradition, which I argue is part of the historical materialist one, and using a critical realist method of analysis, I contend that the neo-liberal paradigm, now directing global transformation, is generating a complex supranational structure that compels states, competing in the global arena, to serve as conduit of global capital. States within this emergent global order move towards a common model, which consists of three mutually reinforcing elements. These are: a neoliberal economy, which aims at the ascendancy of market forces; a Weberian bureaucracy, reflecting processes of rationalization; and ?low-intensity democracy,? which focuses on formal electoral rights, with little consideration for the wider socioeconomic power structure. To elaborate, today?s global liberal market sustains a new strain of capitalism, one that concentrates an inordinate amount of power in the hands of corporations at the expense of ?democracy.? Contrary to what the neo-Marxist literature argues, the paper maintains that even though we will continue to witness opposition against this process, through different means, this will not result in the ?ultimate class struggle.? Instead we will see ?consensual? forms of social control with their mechanisms of ideological hegemony, and worldwide ?class warfare? among the poor, and between the poor and the middle class, whose members witness a decline in their standard of living. I argue that global capitalism, then, simultaneously creates integration at the structural level and fragmentation at the microlevel. Indeed, it exacerbates national, class, racial, and cultural disparities, interdicting the development of class solidarity. This study focuses on the emerging ?low-intensity democracy.? The research, through cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses, which employ both quantitative and qualitative methods, will examine the level of democracy in ?developing? (Bolivia and Uganda) and ?developed? states (Germany and Britain). Each states? level of democracy is then compared to the relative condition to one another and against itself over the previous decade. [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]

One of the more remarkable intellectual consequences of September 11 has been the revival of neo-conservative discourse within the United States which openly advocates imperialism within the context of a more general defence of Empire. In this paper I shall argue that the discourse is not quite so new as some now seem to think, but unlike all previous attempts to theorize Empire in the United States this one is of special interest because it is being made by those on the right and not on the left. The paper will go on to look at the notion of Empire in theoretical terms, and conclude that whatever its conceptual shortcomings there is still much to recommend its use as a way of thinking about the American international system in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate between advocates of partition and power sharing as alternative solutions to ethnic civil wars is frequently clouded by a failure to distinguish the different goals of ethnic rebellions. This paper challenges the widely held implication that ethnic conflict is synonymous with separatism by showing how a third of the largest scale ethnic rebellions are fought for control over the state. It puts forward the thesis that ending these state capture conflicts requires a very different set of arrangements from ending separatist fights. In particular, the political ambitions of groups seeking to capture the state are not likely to be mollified by instituting separation of populations--regardless of the positive effects separation might have for security--or through negotiating autonomy. Further, when power sharing accords are forced on groups whose political objective is separation from the state, such arrangements are likely to effect only a pause in conflict before a future resumption of separatist violence. The paper warns against one size fits all solutions, and notes that accords are likely to succumb to revisionist violence in cases in which the political goals of combatants are not taken into account. [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]

The principle of self-determination, once understood to be one of the fundamental pillars of a system based on the primacy of the state, has recently come to be associated more closely with sub-state movements for ethnic nationalism and secession. The confrontation between such movements and the state, particularly in the postcolonial context of Asia and Africa, has provided the international community with more violent conflicts in the last decade than any other single threat to international peace and security. This has in turn altered the international context of that other fundamental pillar of the Westphalian system: the principle of non-intervention. The rapid transformation of international norms brought on by the end of the Cold War has called into question the legitimacy and morality of a continuing avoidance of intervention where such avoidance contributes directly to the exacerbation of international insecurity. Normative change is a key aspect of the dynamism of international society, and it is normative change that has altered the contemporary meaning of self-determination in world affairs. The broadening salience of standards of internal governance since the end of the Cold War has renewed the internal aspect of self-determination, and in so doing has disclosed the dual character of self-determination as a legitimacy norm. This paper outlines this interpretation of self-determination with four key arguments. First, the inter-relation between the norm’s internal (or constitutive) aspect and its external (or regulative) aspect is central to its function in international society. Self-determination has always been understood to play an important role in shaping how states mutually construct the meaning of state in international society. But the content of that role has been subject to the historical interaction between states’ practice of international relations (in particular the societal understanding of the standards of legitimate statehood) and the practice of state governments in governing their polities. Tracing this external-internal interface in the evolution of self-determination is central to understanding its contemporary meaning. In particular, the paper argues that the external-internal interface in the functioning of the self-determination norm is evinced most clearly by its central role in the construction of sovereign legitimacy. The second key argument is that international consensus on the fundamental purpose of the state as a political community, i.e. the state’s irreducible duties of governance, has an increasingly significant impact on the content and meaning of self-determination as a legitimacy norm. This is because sovereign legitimacy rests on the concept of effective control, and in recent years there has been considerable evidence in state practice to suggest that legitimately effective control by the state can only be understood to derive from the consent of the governed, i.e. from popular sovereignty. The paper argues here that the empirical character of internal, governmental control of the polity by the state is inter-related with the recognition of the state’s sovereign legitimacy by international society, and this connection is effected by self-determination in its function as a legitimacy norm. Changes in the intersubjective consensus on the governance duties of the state, such as seen with the global rejection of colonial rule, thus have a direct impact on the normative content of self-determination. But changing understandings of how the polity itself is delimited (whether nation-centric or state-centric) have also had an important impact on how the self-determination norm is applied in practice. While state practice during the decolonisation era affirmed the emancipatory connection between self-determination and internal governance, it also evolved a rigidly statist and juridical understanding of the polity, particularly in the postcolonial world. The third key argument is that since the end of the Cold War, there has been a demonstrable trend within international society to return to some consideration of positive sovereignty in the adjudging of sovereign legitimacy. This has been manifested in a growing international concern with the character of internal control by state governments, and in new criteria for democratic governance as a basis for effective control. By applying new internal criteria on democracy and human rights to the recognition of sovereign legitimacy, international society has applied governance norms so as to legitimate international interest in the internal affairs of states. One implication of this trend is that democratic governance is beginning to supplant territoriality and negative sovereignty as the defining norm for the intersubjective constitution of sovereign legitimacy in international society. In addition, the progressive institutionalisation of democracy and human rights norms in the practice of international organisations and customary international law has forged a new relationship between democratic governance and international peace and security. By linking internal governance to both sovereign legitimacy and international peace, the new consensus has arguably lowered the political threshold for external intervention in countries where governance norms are being violated. The final key argument of the paper is that as the emerging global consensus on governance norms has served to constrain state sovereignty, particularly in the postcolonial world, it has also thereby altered the substantive content of the self-determination norm. The external development and promotion of governance norms since the end of the Cold War has, in particular, enhanced the salience of the internal, constitutive aspect of self-determination. Since self-determination is shaped directly by changes in international consensus on the fundamental governance duties of the state, the norm has evolved into a standard by which to measure the legitimacy of a state’s internal sovereignty. In specific terms, the norm should now be understood to include the internal requirement for pluralistic, representative democracy. Internal self-determination is not only about the holding of multiparty elections in the political process, however. The fact that the new content of self-determination is rooted in governance norms means that its internal practice must also recognise pluralism and provide continuous and authentic opportunities for identity groups such as ethnic minorities to achieve autonomous self-governance. Effective autonomy in self-governance, moreover, must include the freedom for groups to determine their political and constitutional status, as well as their economic, social, and cultural development. The entitlement to a self-determination remedy for sub-state groups is still controversial, however, and at best can be said to depend on the nature and duration of the governance violations by the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will deal with the difficulties of the Right-Wing Israel Government in moving toward a final peace agreement with the Palestinians. The Sharon Goverment has a strong ideological comittment to the idea of Greater Israel, an ideology which contradicts the possibility of the re-partition of Palestine as Bush’s Roadmap envision. The dilemmas of the Israeli coalition government will be analyzed from the perspective of both Constructivist Theory of International Relations and from the perspective of institutional considerations. This paper will be based on current research, but also on 20 year study of the Israeli right, and in particular the ideologies of former prime ministers Begin and Netanyahu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immediate and sensational, omnipresent and pervasive are among the adjectives used to describe modern media. It is widely assumed that news media have an impact both on the process of foreign policy-making and on the resulting policy itself. The media’s impact is believed to be substantial as the claims for media-driven policy suggest, Somalia (1992) and Iraq (1991) being the most cited examples. In their majority these claims are based on experiences, research and observations over the Western ? primarily American ? news media. Focusing on the general theme of the relationship between media and politics, this paper considers the representation of the Kosovo crisis by the East European media - Bulgarian in particular. It assesses the interaction between the media coverage and the government’s foreign policy. Thus it tests the key analytical assumptions established and previously tested in the West regarding media effects on foreign policy-making when a ‘humanitarian intervention’ is undertaken. The paper is organized in two main parts: I) An introduction to the debate on media and politics in general, with a focus on the so-called ‘CNN effect’ (Robinson (1999, 2000, 2003), Gowing (1996), Strobel (1997) and ‘manufacturing consent’ (Chomsky and Herman (1988), Bennet (1990), Entman (1991) approaches and the existing models for measuring media-policy interaction. II) An empirical examination of Bulgarian media coverage and its possible influences on official Bulgarian policy with regard to the Kosovo crisis. The concluding argument suggests firstly, that although in its post-communist development the Bulgarian media in general follow in the footsteps of the Western, when the analysis is taken to a more specific level such as the media-foreign policy interaction some differences become obvious. Secondly, the models developed for the Western media can be applied in East European context and be to an extent useful, but their findings will not necessarily grasp all the peculiarities of the context and offer a convincing case for either media influence or non-influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper proposes a framework for understanding the emergence of new human rights issues, rights omitted from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as well as those mentioned but given little prominence until lately. In recent years, groups such as the mentally and physically disabled, Third World slumdwellers, South Asian Dalits (untouchables), AIDS patients, victims of corporate malfeasance, and the world’s poor have claimed internationally- based rights. In most cases, their efforts have met resistance from governments and powerful corporate interests. Even apparent allies among major human rights NGOs have voiced misgivings about new rights, arguing that rights proliferation may cheapen their traditionally central concerns, civil and political rights. My paper argues that the construction of new human rights norms involves four phases. First, politicized groups frame long-felt grievances as rights. Why and how they do so has received little scholarly attention. Second, they seek to place new rights claims on the international agenda, chiefly by convincing gatekeepers in major international human rights organizations to adopt and promote new rights. This seldom-examined stage is crucial since a handful of powerful NGOs jealously guard a perceived human rights core and exercise significant power in certifying new rights as worthy of international action. Third, NGOs spearhead new conventions before key international bodies. Finally, whether or not formally enacted, new norms require implementation not merely in domestic law but also on the ground. Highlighting the first two phases of this process, my paper draws on theories of social movements and transnational relations to develop new insights about the political construction of new rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an examination of the controversy surrounding Ronald Robinson and Jack Gallagher’s 1953 argument of the Imperialism of Free Trade, the paper seeks to shed light on contemporary understandings of international markets and political control. Robinson and Gallagher argued that late Nineteenth Century imperialism was simply a continuation of an earlier British policy that encouraged and supported the expansion of trade throughout the world. They claimed that penetration of foreign markets by British goods was commensurate with the establishment of British political control. Their critics mounted a successful critique against The Imperialism of Free Trade on the basis that Robinson and Gallagher had ignored a key distinction between the establishment of markets and the establishment of political control. In so doing they had lost any sense of what was unique about the expansion of imperialism in the 1880s. The paper will aim to apply this last insight to popular discussions of international politics and economics today, in the work of Naomi Klein, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, and John Grey. It will claim that these authors have not made clear the link between free markets and political control, in so doing they risk ahistorising the concepts of imperialism and empire, undermining the usefulness of these concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade Related Intellectual Property agreements recently became one of the most significant institutions in establishing and maintaining the new set of mechanisms of global health governance via creating new rules of transnational partnerships, networking, and communication. In this paper I concentrate my analysis not only around a politically sensitive question about who will benefit more from respecting the TRIPs rules and procedures, but look at how and why do TRIPs facilitate international cooperation on global health and what obstacles do they bring to the global health governance. First, an analysis is undertaken of how and why the general debates around TRIPs contending arguments are generally not sufficient, and are ingrained into ideologies of political economy. Second, my paper aims at a understanding how and why TRIPs is instigating the decay of those networks and partnerships, which have been more or less efficient in AIDS eradicating during the 1990s. The informal power of intellectual property as opposed to the official flagmanship role of WHO and UNAIDS is explored and the transition from partnerships networks to unilateral health governance is traced. Third, I also examine how several crucial global health discourses are shifting and what new discursive HIV/AIDS-related frames appear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protracted conflicts in failed states, new wars and man-made disasters are having a massive impact on international society and, more specifically, on the system of humanitarian aid policy. This system has been considerably modified by the emergence of a new generation of humanitarian organizations with strong ‘post-sovereignty’ and human rights agendas. Against the background of the solidarist-pluralist debate in English school theory and recent suggestions to open ES thinking to reconciling its traditional state-centricity with the consideration of a wider range of global nonstate activities, the paper focusses on the values, operational approaches and strategies of different humanitarian actors. The author examines the question whether the new humanitarianism ultimately reaffirms an updated version of international society or whether it aims at ‘something morally prior to it’ (H. Bull). Can organized humanitarianism be counted as a voice of world society against ‘callous’ power politics, or has moral universalism itself been hijacked by hegemonic powers? Does humanitarianism as an expanding institution represent a case against sovereignty or rather a case of the pursuit of joint gain by ‘western’ states within the context of enlarged solidarist arrangements? Ultimately, how should we continue to redesign the study and practice of IR in order to escape the often fairly credulity-stretching ethical self-descriptions of both humanitarian and governmental actors without falling into the trap of neorealism. The paper is based on findings of a research project funded by the German Volkswagen Foundation and realized at the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt and at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard University. [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 paper argues that if social and political theory was shaped by the politics of difference in last two decades of the past century, it will and should increasingly become preoccupied with the question of global solidarity at the beginning of the 21st century. In the first part of the paper, I claim that this requires moving beyond the overly abstract, formal and proceduralist conceptions of solidarity found in the discourses of cosmopolitanism, universal human rights and liberal instititutionalism predominating in academic and public-policy circles today. The second part of the paper thus contends that global solidarity can be interpreted as a transnational mode of ethico-political practice, a form of normatively and politically driven social action that seeks to articulate the principles of difference and equality in the construction of social bonds with distant others. I will illustrate this point by analyzing the alternative globalization?or so-called ?anti-globalization??movement, which seeks to ground its solidaristic politics in an understanding of the multiple modernities of subordinate groups in different parts of the globe without falling back into the traps of radical particularism (othering) or false universalism (sameness). Such efforts have gained a new urgency in the post-September 11 world, where attempts to divide humankind along essentialized civilizational, religious and ethno-racial lines is gaining renewed favour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to map the limits of the geopolitical imaginary in post-Cold War Germany. The research for this paper is a first cut into a broader investigation into the reasons for the absence of a geopolitical renaissance, despite a strong German tradition of Geopolitik. While the early 1990s saw a number of publications on new opportunities for German geopolitical interests, these publications never seemed to have had a significant impact on the politically relevant discourse. The present paper will provide a brief analysis of these publications and the representations of geo-political space found in them. As such, they are taken to outline the expanded space of geopolitical imagination in post-Cold War Germany. In a second move, the paper will trace the actual contours of the German government’s emerging post-cold war discourse, 1989-1994. The paper will pay particular attention to this discourse’s geographic spatialization and the government’s attempts to continuously anchor Germany’ in the West, thus foregoing any reconsideration of German foreign policy’s Weltbild. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While political life in Africa remains volatile and complex, the end of the Cold War ushered in the collapse of authoritarian regimes and liberalization of governments. There was a hope that the new political systems would provide legal and political accountability. Western governments shared this hope, in light of their belief in democracy as a panacea for Africa’s political and economic woes. However, early euphoria gave way to disappointment because some incumbent regimes continue to show their reluctance to relinquish power. Although there is room for cautious optimism, the realities of Africa’s political and economic plight and foreign powers’ interests on the continent might undermine democratic efforts on the continent. If Africa’s past is any guide, the road to democracy will be long and painful. After several decades of mismanagement, corruption, and a lack of effective leadership, Africa finally embarked on a democratic path in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Thanks to civil society’s resilience but, more importantly, to the military’s cooperation, one-party regimes relaxed their grip on political and economic power. While they relaxed their grip, they have not relinquished it, and their tenacity has diminished early hopes in such countries as Togo, Guinea Republic, the Congo, and Mauritania. The thrust of the paper is that Africans took to the street to demand a peaceful and more accountable political setting that can trigger a fundamental change in their living conditions. But they are learning that unless persistent autocratic rule and declining social conditions are seriously dealt with, the ongoing democratization process on the continent will once again fail Africans. In probing democracy’s journey in Africa, the paper will mainly relate Demos’s painful pilgrimage to Kratia, by uncovering respective roles played by both civil society and the military and by exposing the Achilles’ heel of the democratization process in Africa: stable civil-military relations and widespread economic hardship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the relationship between power and knowledge in the context of the construction of security in Australia. Specifically, it seeks to apply critical theoretical approaches to security to the Australian government’s security discourse regarding asylum-seekers in 2001 and terrorist attacks in 2001 and 2002. It is argued in this paper that perceptions of the provision of security are central to the political legitimacy of states. In particular, specific actions on the part of governments may be enabled by perceptions among their citizens that these actions maintain or further their security. If we accept this point, then the crucial question becomes: how do certain meanings of security come to resonate with particular populations in particular contexts? It is argued here that we can further our understanding of this process through acknowledging relationships between power and knowledge, and specifically the role of governments in creating contexts in which particular meanings of security become resonant. Through applying such an approach to the Australian government’s depiction of asylum-seekers and its response to terrorist attacks in New York and particularly Bali, we can move towards a greater understanding of the ways in which security is constructed and of the relationship between security and political legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many students of terrorism invoke psychological factors to explain decisions to use violence against civilians. But labeling political violence against civilians terrorism and relegating its causes to psychological considerations do little by way of prescriptive analysis. This type of analysis only comforts the commonsense perception that terrorists are irrational beings and that, consequently, dialogue with such groups is useless. This paper questions such received wisdom. Drawing from the experience of Hizballah, a Lebanese Shiite political militia-turned party, I argue that the resort to violence against civilians, far from being an irrational impulse, is a carefully calibrated strategy. The argument proceeds in two steps. First, I establish that several factors can be invoked to draw a typology of relations between Hizballah and various segments of the Lebanese and Israeli populations. Second, I demonstrate the linkage between differing types of relations and specific strategies used by Hizballah in its dealings with the various target populations. Though primarily a case-study, the paper has broader implications as will be demonstrated throughout by drawing analogies to the strategies of other groups involved in terrorist violence against civilians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For T. H. Marshall citizenship, the acquisition of rights followed a temporal sequence: civil rights, followed by political and finally social rights. In Latin America the sequence of rights was, however, quite different from that in England. Countries with a populist tradition like Argentina and Brazil first granted social rights, while Colombia and Venezuela, where the populist impulse was weaker, first achieved political rights. In both cases,civil rights were granted in a limited and biased manner. The consequence of this inversion is the presence of a citizenship of ?low intensity?(O?Donnell). In this paper I ask how the institutionalization of the social affects the extension of citizen?s rights? While O?Donnell?s thesis is not without insight, I argue that the best explanation for the appearance of low intensity citizenship is to be found in the social narratives through which elites attempt to forge a sense of community. This approach fits with Marshall?s dynamic view of social citizenship as that which creates ?a horizon of legitimate expectations.? This paper concentrates on the capacity of social languages to create this horizon or, expressed in a negative manner, in the presence of languages that hinder the translation of social benefits into full-fledged rights. The paper illustrates the theoretical argument by the case of Colombia in the 1910-1948 period. In Colombia the social is the result of a matrix of narratives emphasing, hygiene, populism, economic liberalism, Catholic morality and labour. Gender intersects these different narratives. These combinations of narratives precluded the formation of actors with capacity to further citizens? rights. As a result the state lost its capacity to mediate conflicts as the country entered in the period known as La Violencia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hegemonic Governance and International Trade: Systemic and Dyadic Effects This paper examines the impact of hegemonic governance on interstate trade. The questions of whether and how this particular type of international leadership affects the international political economy have lately received scant attention in the political science and economics literatures. This is unfortunate, given the potential explanatory power of this rich theoretical perspective. This paper has three (3) objectives. First, we review the theoretical arguments and earlier empirical investigations linking hegemonic leadership to international economic stability. Although the majority of previous studies tend to find support for the hypothesis that hegemony is not a necessary condition for financial stability (measured in terms of free trade), these examinations leave many important questions unanswered, or at best, with ambiguous answers. Thus, we develop a more complete theoretical argument explaining how hegemony affects interstate trade ? at the system, sub-systemic, and dyadic levels of analysis. The theory of hegemonic governance stipulates that strong hegemony increases trade across the system and also within nation-state pairs where the hegemon?the state with the ability, the will, and the acceptance of other states to assume leadership?has a stake. Finally, we use comprehensive, multidimensional indicators (from Sacko 2003) to conduct a much?improved assessment of the effects of both the hegemonic power and hegemonic interest of the United Kingdom (1816-1945) and the United States (1946-1992) on interstate trade. We find that hegemonic governance does not statistically significantly affect aggregate, world trade. Hegemonic governance, however, is statistically significantly and positively related to both major power sub-system trade ? and to trade within dyads strategically relevant to the hegemon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will discuss some of the theoretical and explanatory insights of my research, pertaining to US soft power and the nature of world order. The definition of soft power I adopt is a socially constitutive one, and the role of soft power in international regimes and institutions: legitimating rules, generating symbolic power, structuring the social contexts of negotiation, will be discussed. This theory of soft power is developed as a critique to dominant accounts such as Nye’s, as well as conventional neorealist and neoliberal explanations of the way the US achieved and maintained hegemony. I adopt insights from theories of social power within the hierarchical systems to give a better account of the way the US has shaped its international role. This paper will focus on the theoretical rethinking of soft power and a historical focus rather than presenting a critique of the current US administration’s foreign policy. Sarah E. Graham Australian National University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper can be seen as part of a recent trajectory in International Relations to genealogically investigate some of its most prominent concepts such as security, sovereignty, intervention, etc... This trajectory is part of the crossover in the discipline between International Relations and Political Theory. The present paper is culled and developed from a broader work that provides a genealogy of security from the beginnings of the common era to the present focusing upon three interregna: the shift from Roman Republic to Empire and the advent of Christianity; the shift from Christendom to Sovereign State in the classical age; and the advent of the modern sovereign State and the present mutations of the sovereign order. In this paper, what is focused upon is precisely the shift in the classical age from Divine Order to Sovereign State. What is retraced is the way in which the these two forms of social order confer a certain meaning to security and, consequently, to where and how the political is articulated in each. Furthermore, it is argued that the central role of security in articulating social order make these security discourses a central aspect of the transition from Divine Order to Sovereign State. Conversely, this transition is central in explaining the disappearance of a negative meaning to security understood as carelessness (from sine:without and cura:care)and the current hegemony of the understanding of security as something positive (e.g.freedom from threats). In this sense, the paper fits well into the theme of the convention by exploring the linkages between power and ideology and power and knowledge by exploring genealogically the linkages between the hegemonic articulation of a particular meaning to security and the founding and maintenance of a particular social order, a particular understanding of what the political is. In relation to the present mutations of social order, it provides a way to apprehend the latter via an understanding of how the present hegemonic meaning of security has developed while concurrently providing the possibility for resistance to its increasingly prevalent deployment into new spheres of social and political space. [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]

At the heart of Critical Security Studies (CSS) is a commitment to promoting emancipation. The argument of the paper is that, for that commitment to emancipation to be effective, CSS scholars must develop a deeper understanding of the ways in which academic professional training can undermine that commitment and must develop strategies so that they can succeed in academia while protecting that commitment. The paper sets its discussion of IR academic training in the context of the broader literature on the politics of professional training, in particular Jeff Schmidt’s ‘Disciplined Minds’: the primary function of academic professional training is not the inculcation of neutral skills but ideological discipline. The paper duscusses the extent of the success of CSS, peace studies and internet networks such as ZNet and NASPIR in preserving a commitment to emancipatory politics within IR academia. It concludes by arguing that there is a potential for a second wave of CSS characterised by a more effective approach to academic disciplinary politics; coalition building with other critical scholars who do not categorise themselves in terms of CSS; and greater engagement with those already engaged in emancipatory political practice [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the International Organizations classroom, students learn a lot about the nuts and bolts of international organizations in theory, but don’t always have to opportunity to understand how international organizations work in practice. Understanding negotiations, diplomacy and inter-state relations is key to understanding the strengths of weaknesses of international organizations. To this end, the use of in-class simulations, where each student represents a different country, enables students to see why it is not always easy for international organizations to be effective. Security Council simulations are ideal for international organizations classes of 15-30 students. Not only do they demonstrate the difficulties of reaching agreement on complex issues of peace and security, but students can get a better understanding of the dynamics between the permanent five members with veto power (US, UK, China, Russia and France) and the ten rotating members who do not have veto power and spend only two years on the Council. This paper will describe a simulation that I ran in my international organizations class in the Fall 2002 semester. It involved a serious terrorist attack in Singapore during a performance of Kiddish for Naomi performed by the Israel Habima Theatre company. The performance, which was being televised live in both Singapore and on Israeli national television, was interrupted by the terrorists who took center stage. Before a shocked audience, the bombers gave a short political statement in Arabic and detonated what were apparently five suitcases packed with C4 explosives. The explosion and resulting fire destroyed the theatre, killing nearly everyone inside the structure. No organization claimed responsibility. The paper will describe the goals of the simulation, the preparation the students undertook throughout the semester, the preparation and implementation of the simulation itself, and the post-simulation debriefing and assessment of the students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies and examines a number of long-term trends reshaping the security environment in the Taiwan Strait in ways that might produce a military conflict. Focusing on long-term trends is a useful analytical approach that highlights the possibility that political leaders may knowingly take risky actions in response to perceptions that adverse trends are eroding their security. Taiwan?s democratic transition and growing sense of a separate Taiwan identity have changed the political considerations governing Taiwan?s policy toward the mainland. China worries about growing pro-independence sentiment in Taiwan, but lacks the political tools to build support for unification. As a result, China has sought to deter movement toward Taiwan independence while developing the military capabilities to deter U.S. intervention in support of Taiwan. China?s goal is to force the United States to choose between continuing its support for Taiwan or sacrificing Chinese cooperation on economic and security issues. The perceived Chinese military threat to Taiwan has caused the United States to increase its support for Taiwan, included increased security cooperation. These trends are gradually undercutting the basis for the ?one China? framework that has served U.S. interests effectively for the past thirty years. The paper examines these long-term trends and assesses their implications for the stability of the security environment in the Taiwan Strait. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The power structure of the Central Civilization/ World System is appraised at 25-year intervals, from 1500 BC to an arbitrary stopping point of 700 BC. The systemic power structure will be evaluated in terms of its predominant forms and their stability. This paper will be the sixth in a series in which the political careers of civilizations/world systems receive snapshot codings of their overall power structures at feasible intervals. The narratives are produced by collating histories with large frames of reference. The codings are done using a nominal variable, polarity, with seven available values: nonpolarity; multipolarity; tripolarity; bipolarity; unipolarity; hegemony; empire. Previous articles and papers in the series have examined the Indic system 550 BC--AD 1800, the Far Eastern 1025 BC--AD 1850, the Northeast African c. 2625--1500 BC, and the Southwest Asian c.2700--1500 BC. The Northeast African and Southwest Asian systems and sequences merge c. 1500 BC to form the Central system, which has continued in existence since then, and expanded to global scope, engulfing all former coexisting world systems. The current paper will graph the first 800 years, or roughly one quarter of the duration, of the ongoing Central system, now over 3500 years old. The paper compares the sequence to the expectations of various theories. Toynbee’s revised civilizational model fares best; the classical European balance of power model is only partly successful. Alternative directions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper takes its departure from recent discussions about the possibility of a cosmopolitan democracy. The paper responds to various crtiticisms leveled at this idea, while also proposing a number of structural changes or innovations which would render such a democracy more feasible and realizable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Signing of Dayton Peace Agreement of November 21, 1995 not only meant the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina but it also represented the beginning of a new trend in international relations. This trend is characterized by collapsing of traditional realist distinctions between security concerns on the one side, and state and nation-building policies, on the other. If the previous wisdom of the day demanded the primacy of the security agenda over institution and nation-building policies, the current understanding is that the international community (IC) plays a crucial role in fostering democratization and nation-building in the context of failed, multiethnic states. In other words, an active international engagement in ?rebuilding the ship at sea? is nowadays perceived as a security issue in its own right ? a necessary precondition for a more stable and peaceful international environment. This, however, begs the question as to what does the international toolkit of democracy and nation-building contain? Also, is there a gap between the international rhetoric of human rights, democracy and minority protection, on the one side, and the ways these principles are being perceived and acted upon by local elites and public in general in internationally run states? In dealing with theses questions, the paper?s focus will be primarily on the Southeast European experiences with the twin process of democratization and nation-building. First, the international blueprint of democratization will be presented. Then, the international toolkit of democratization will be evaluated from the perspective of the (in)compatibility between the processes of democratization and nation-building. Third section will offer a comparative evaluation of nation-building and power sharing arrangements in the region. Finally, I will critically evaluate why some of the most cherished techniques of power sharing yielded the unanticipated results that challenge the very project of internationally sponsored democratization. For the copy of the paper, please send request to dguzina@wlu.ca [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of the migration movements in the post-Soviet countries that have taken place since 1990 are unique to the region given the circumstances of economic transition, political and social liberalization. Tajikistan is one of the poorest post-Soviet countries where remittances are considered as one of the main growth drivers. Based on its economic specialization it can be characterized as labor-supplying country. How successful are democratic transitions in laborsupplying/ highly remittance-dependent countries - is the key question of the analysis in this paper. Economic specialization shapes identity of the people and impacts their perception of democracy and participation in the politics. In other words, there is interrelationship between "what we do", "who we are", "and "how we think". The issues of Tajik circular labor migration to Russian Federation and impact of the mode of migration, length of stay and structural position in Russia and Tajikistan on the political orientation of the migrants is central in this paper. Based on this analysis the puzzling question of the direction of political change in Tajikistan becomes important. No democratization is possible with the nature of constituents and their level of participation in politics of Tajikistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the idea of patrimonial capitalism and its application to Russia. The paper problematises the view that the form of political economy -often described as a version of state capitalism- developed in Russia in the Putin era can lead Russia out of its economic torpor. It is argued that the form of Russia's political economy is the problem and not the solution. Before the crisis this patrimonial capitalist system supported itself on the back of high hydrocarbon prices and looked for its development to global capital mixed with national resource wealth. These sources of investment capital are, of course, now much shrunken. Under these conditions the political risks of creating a developmental regime and breaking with the patrimonial capitalist system are high since they mean an attack on that system rather than its transmutation through development in which there are resources both for 'partners' in patrimonialism and for the establishment of new economic sectors that can, in time, replace as sources of political power those natural resource and other sectors that are the bedrock of patrimonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies Iran?s foreign policy and decision-making process and culture. It discusses the "how"s and "why"s of Iran?s strategic philosophy and their implications for the decisions made by the system since 1979. Post 9/11 changes in the region brought fundamental transformations in Iran?s image worldwide in addition to changing its worldview. The paper will identify the principles of Iran?s strategic thoughts and factors affecting them since the inception of the Islamic Republic in 1979. This will include in-depth examination of domestic and international cases. The paper will briefly trace the historical, international and domestic context of Iran's political and strategic decision-making culture, and analyze the regional impact of decisions made. It will also spotlight the domestic and external debates that the entire process has generated, and conclude with the identification and implications of such changes in Iran?s foreign policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the modern Western world war is not only exorcized from the social domain but also seen as inherently evil even though armed force is constantly used as an instrument of policy. Credibility as a security political actor still calls for possession of armed force. War as a phenomenon also underpins much of the social and cultural reality even when it is not actually being waged. The paper addresses this fundamental divide between the Western common conception, and rhetoric, of war and the contrasting evident, widespread Western use of armed force and the hidden role of war in the structure of peaceful societies. What are the implications for war studies? Is war as a social phenomenon adequately theorized or is war too elusive for a coherent study? The paper outlines a proposal for an approach to the study of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After disarming and demobilizing, why do some ex-combatants re-engage in organized violence, while others do not? Even though former fighters have been identified as a major source of insecurity in post-civil war societies due to their military know-how, there have been few efforts to systematically examine this puzzle. This paper fills this research gap by comparing the presence or absence of organized violence in different ex-combatant communities - all the former fighters that used to belong to the same armed faction and who share a common, horizontal identity based on shared war- and peacetime experiences. It does so by analyzing six ex-combatant communities in two countries: ex-Cobra, Cocoye and Ninja in the Republic of Congo and ex-AFRC, CDF and RUF in Sierra Leone. Contrary to assumptions found in the literature on disarming, demobilizing and reintegrating (DDR) ex-combatants, this paper finds that factors such as the availability of small arms and lack of economic opportunities or personal security have little explanatory value in themselves. Instead, ex-combatant violence is rather the result of interaction between entrepreneurs of violence, relationships and intermediaries. It argues, more specifically, that former fighters only take to arms when they have access to entrepreneurs of violence - political, military, religious or business elites who have the will, capacity and ability to coordinate organized violence in a post-conflict setting. By utilizing relationships based on selective incentives and social networks, these actors can generate the enticements and feelings of affinity or trust, needed to convince ex-combatants to resort to arms. However, as entrepreneurs have limited contact with former fighters, they are dependent on the services of intermediaries - such as former mid-level commanders - to do the actual recruitment for them. These findings demonstrate that the hybrid character of many peace processes is a major source of ex-combatant violence; by failing to fully dismantle post-war structures peacemakers provide spoiling elites with the capacity to sponsor new violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large component of contemporary peacebuilding practices includes Demobilization, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) programs for excombatants. If we examine and link the political culture of ex-combatants and enrollment in DDR we can understand the interaction between peacebuilding and democratization at the micro-level. DDR programs are rarely studied in terms of their political impact, but these ramifications are at the center of this paper. However, past research has failed to thoroughly dissect what political reintegration means. This paper offers a discussion of what this concept should include, and not include. In particular, this paper stresses the problems of assuming that political reintegration is automatically democratic. Instead political reintegration should be conceptualized along two dimensions: political involvement and democratic involvement. The design of DDR programs matter here, however with different repercussions for peacebuilding and democratization. The political culture exhibited by the excombatants in Liberia is not thoroughly coherent, and elements thereof are sometimes contradictory; at times conducive to the stability of peace and at other times conducive to the stability of democracy. While some programs do seem to push in a positive direction concerning political reintegration, they do not do so across the board, and certain crucial democratic elements are left aside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper recognizes that emerging military technologies in the 21st century are being innovated, adapted and used at an unprecedented rate in a culture of technological uncertainty which provides very little time for introspection and minimal governance. Even a cursory review of the contemporary governance architecture regarding these technologies reveals a disturbing lack of consensus regarding the necessity for governance and the methodologies to be utilized to achieve it. There is, however, considerable professional, national and international infrastructure upon which to hang a regime of articulated goals and proscriptions, if the political will could be energized to engage in such a project. This paper reviews that infrastructure and suggests that it provides an appropriate starting point for technology governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bridging the cosmopolitan/communitarian divide is one of the most challenging tasks in the (sub-) field of International Political Theory and it has inspired scholars throughout the last years. This paper will focus on cosmopolitan constitutions as a promising middle ground between universalist and particularistic claims. The first part of the paper gives a short theoretical introduction into the current theoretical debate and focuses mainly on the division between ideal and non-ideal reasoning. The second part evaluates the scholarship on dialogic cosmopolitanism in general and on specific conceptions that have been used to bridge this divide. It identifies and evaluates sovereignty, statehood and, constitutionalism as the aforementioned conceptions. The final part of the paper reconstructs how a cosmopolitan constitution emerges, namely through the absorption of universal right claims into national legal orders, and argues from a normative perspective that cosmopolitan constitutions are a way to bridge the cosmopolitan/communitarian divide especially if they are established and sustained through specific discursive practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the declining Austro-Hungarian Empire, Otto Bauer's work "The Nationalities Question and Social Democracy" (1907) appeared, within the Marxist political thought about the concept of nation, as a theoretical proposal about the issue of peripheral nationalisms. On the eve of the First World War, the Habsburg monarchy was facing a crisis of identity, in which Czechs, Croats, Poles and others were aspiring to more autonomy, and in some cases, to independence. It was in this context that Bauer presented socialism as a solution to the question of nationalities, particularly in Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is the aim of this paper to analyse Bauer's theory of nation, not merely within Austro-Marxism thinking and the political context of the Habsburg Empire in early 20th century, but more particularly with the aspiration of highlighting constructive ideas of multiculturalism presented by this author, applied to potentially explosive situations in terms of ethnic or nationalist conflict. Furthermore, which features of his theory can be linked to political and institutional nation-building processes? Does Bauer's theory can still have interest for the study of the national question? These are the questions to which this paper will try to give an answer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to discuss international parliamentary co-operation and inter-parliamentary relations in a specific context of state-formation, in a society that has emerged from a violent conflict. Specifically, the paper analyses a multistakeholder partnership in Kosovo, called the Assembly Support Initiative (ASI), composed of national and international actors, working together to establish a functioning parliament in Kosovo - a former Yugoslav province that declared its independence in February 2008, after it had gone through rounds of violent conflict. The beneficiaries of this partnership - which was formed in 2001 because there was so much international interest in helping Kosovo and the Kosovo Assembly in the democratisation process that co-ordination was needed - are members of the Kosovo national parliament (Kosovo Assembly), diverse parliamentary groups, Kosovo parliamentary Committees, Press and Public information Section and representatives of the civil society that have a role in the democratic parliamentary process. The paper looks at the role of individual actors involved in this process, and focuses particularly on the role of international actors in the process of setting up of the Kosovo Assembly. The paper analyses this process of parliament building at the national level, and pays special attention to international parliamentary support in this process. The ASI documentation and a number of interviews with the stakeholders and beneficiaries of the ASI are used to analyse and explain the functioning of this partnership, relations among the partners (particularly the relations with other national parliaments), and the results of this initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to think through video/digital games as practices in the study of images and visuality in critical security studies. As visuality expresses how the vision is always culturally mediated (Hughes 2007), vision is indeed never innocent, and our sight is also always a site, because the things that appear visible to us are so because of visual technologies and perspectives that shape how we see and what we see. A video/digital game offers certain visualities that may remediate real visual practices and geographies (the city, a war theater, the city of Bagdad during the US military "surge" after the main combat operations of 2003, etc.), but one that will also differ significantly due to its own mediated space. How should one study the visuality of videogames, their space design, their geographies? Can we conceive of gaming without thinking about war, about militarization? What does the digital allow and preclude? Informed by games studies, critical geopolitics, critical security studies, and visual media studies, this paper inquires how one can study the peculiarities of video/digital gaming visuality that render war both mediatized as entertainment and visually spatialized as display screens (echoing surveillance practices and other targetting, policing and tracing technologies). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper develops a two-dimensional typology of political reasons for governments to pledge referendums on European integration when they are not obliged to do so: the first dimension is about the political level at which the strategic use of referendum pledges is targeted and it distinguishes between domestic and European reasons; the second dimension attends to the strategic mode of governments when pledging EU referendums which can either be about avoiding political losses (the defensive mode) or about realising political gains (the offensive mode). In combination, the typology yields four ideal types of reasons for governments to commit to EU referendums: the depoliticising, plebiscitary, red-line and internationalist EU referendum pledges. In the empirical analysis, the paper applies this typology to classify 28 cases of discretionary government commitments to EU referendums and it presents the findings of an expert survey that has been conducted for this purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ill-Treatment and Torture (ITT) Data Collection Project uses content analysis to measure Amnesty International's (AI) allegations of government ill-treatment and torture from 1995 to 2005. ITT's country-year (CY) data uses a modified version of the ordinal scale proposed by Hathaway (2002) and quantifies not only AI's allegations about the incidence of ill-treatment and torture at the country-year unit of observation, but further across different responsible government agents and across different econo-socio-political groups of alleged victims. This paper describes quantitative patterns found in the Beta release of ITT's country-year (CY) data and proposes several research questions for future research using the new data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines democracy as an international norm of governance in international political theory and seeks to establish a connection between democratic governance and prevention of conflicts. It is the purpose of this paper to determine how significant the democratic governance as a source of global norm is for preventing international conflicts. The degree of the relationship between democratic governance and peace is tested on an analysis of democratic peace theory with its relationship to Finnemore and Sikkink.s (1998) framework of norm internationalization in order to analyze how democracy, global governance and peace have evolved to be accepted as an international norm. Democracy, the theoretical justifications for democracy, democratic peace and the historical onsets of democratic internationalism are investigated. It is proposed that the application and/or the misapplication of the international model of democracy onto those non-democratic states can lead to armed conflicts. This investigation leads to a discussion of internationalization of democratic norm and its impact on the structures of global governance. It is concluded that the efforts of the international community to foster democracy in the globe have led to a divide between Western (core) civilization and non-Western (peripheral) ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The balance of power is considered by many IR scholars as the nearest thing we have to a political theory of international relations for it lets scholars to tackle central questions of the discipline such as what forms of international anarchy, and what level of interaction between actors will develop as a result of balancing behavior. Although the expression „balance of power? itself was first explicitly coined in Renaissance Italy, the conduct of state actors to meet its criteria goes back to ancient times. This paper will argue that Near East of the Late Bronze Age (LBA) constitutes a meaningful research topic for elaborating the balance of power theory. It was during the Amarna Age in particular that we see for the first time the birth of a genuinely cosmopolitan culture where the states became fully integrated in an international system. Despite IR studies - especially in the English School tradition - examining the LBA Near East, systematic analyses of this phase in international history from the premises of power balancing are still somewhat lacking. The paper suggests that by studying the states-system in the ancient Near East we can better understand the great power dynamics of the present-day region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its introduction, in the late 1990s, Cosmopolitan or Comparative political theory (CPT) has seen phenomenal growth, as a subfield of political theory in North American Universities. Comparative theorists suggest that political theory may have originated as an academic discipline in the west but it should not be considered coterminous with it. This paper critically evaluates various methodological prescriptions put forward by comparative theorists. In particular, it focuses on comparativists' overwhelming tendency to rely on Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics and the construction of imaginary east-west dialogues, to achieve a fusion of horizons, as the preferred method to integrate non-western systems of ideas into mainstream western theorizing. As an alternate to this methodological orientation the paper suggests that CPT's objective, of finding a middle ground between Eurocentrism and Eurodenial, has the potential of introducing the likes of a Khunian paradigm shift within the academic discipline of political theory in the west. However, this is only possible if comparativists expand the scope of CPT to periods earlier than late modernity and detach it from the demands of the current wave of globalization. The paper ends by identifying avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the Third Taiwan Strait crisis which took place between May 1995 and March 1996 between the US, PRC and Taiwan. It is a modified chapter from my thesis and represents an attempt to gain a better understanding of what led to the construction of this crisis, and the factors involved in driving the dynamics of first confrontational and then cooperative behaviour. The paper will argue that social factors, such as the construction of meaning and identity vis-à-vis one another, and social interests such as those relating to reputation, credibility and legitimacy, are all identified as key themes that need to be acknowledged as playing a central role in the unfolding of this event. In addition, as this crisis saw the US and China move from an interactional structure that went from cooperation to confrontation and back to cooperation, an integral part of the investigation relates to opening up a space for the need to consider the processes of transformation and how such reconfigurations were made possible. The underlying premise of this research is that whilst the continued dominance of neoutilitarian approaches to this relationship illuminates a number of aspects of Chinese and American state behaviour towards each other, a more nuanced understanding can only be gained when material factors are analyzed alongside social factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology is central to several major debates within political science. However, political scientists still do not have a general theory of how, and under what conditions, technological change drives domestic and international politics. Instead, current research tends to take a piecemeal approach, focusing on individual technologies or particular periods of technological crisis, development, or modernization. In general theoretical discussions, technology has been relegated to that long list of "and also" independent variables regularly used to flesh out causal explanations of political outcomes. But if we are to understand the political consequences of, and the political obstacles to, technological change, then scholars need a more comprehensive framework. We need to move technological change to the center of political analysis and theorizing. This paper lays the foundation for such a framework by explaining how technology generates international political conflicts, and by identifying the conditions under which these technological politics will become more or less severe. Specifically, this paper will show that technological change is most likely to generate significant political conflicts in three specific circumstances: when it creates, alters, or eliminates 1) market failures; 2) political or economic redistribution; or 3) social constructions of value. This paper will further argue that international technological politics will be most severe when the costs (benefits) of technological change are concentrated on well-defined interest groups whose specific assets are threatened with a loss of relative value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bottled water is currently a part of our daily lives and definitely constitutes a commodity under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. Bulk water, however, is arguably outside WTO rules. It is not a commodity. In 2004, several international contracts to sell bulk water fell through, postponing bulk water becoming an international commodity under WTO rules. What makes bottled and bulk water so different: the container, the quantity, the type of water, its origin, its destination? How are access rules defined within these dynamics? This paper compares the marketisation of bottled water and bulk water, identifying differences and similarities that may help explain the discrepancy of paths and results. The analysis will draw from different case-studies across the world to better understand these dynamics. The discussion will, therefore, centre on the issue of water becoming a commodity or not. The implications of both scenarios are also analyzed, with the input of lawyers, economists, political scientists, sociologists and historians. Finally, the paper analyzes the current water situation and how this discussion ties in (or not) with the dynamics under way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract for the ISA 2010 New Orleans Conference Session of the International Political Science Students' Association on the "Future of Political Science" SHOULD POLITICAL SCIENCE BE MORE RELEVANT? John E. Trent University of Ottawa, Centre on Governance Abstract: "Science or relevance" is up for debate again - all based on the most up-to-date information on political science available. There are many issues. Where does political science fit into globalization, regime modifications and fundamental socio-economic change in the 21st century? What 'big picture' analysis, explanation and proposals do we have to offer about where the world is - or should be - going? How much are our studies and theories considered relevant by leaders and the media? Should we care? Do we just do our science or do we need to be relevant? This paper is introduced by a survey of; recent, empirical information on the state of the discipline. As source material, John Trent first undertakes a synthetic analysis of seven volumes of research on the development of sub-fields of the discipline in the RC 33 book series The World of Political Science. This is complemented by a synthesis of the 75 papers presented at IPSA's May 2008 Montreal Conference on International Political Science: New Theoretical and Regional Perspectives. The paper concludes with an analysis of the viability of the discipline's scientific method and with proposals for the future of the discipline. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]