Contexts of International Politics

Contexts of International Politics
Author: Gary Goertz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 1994-11-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780521469722

In this book Gary Goertz examines how states interact with their environment and contexts, which are important in understanding international politics. He presents a philosophical, methodological and empirical discussion of three important contexts which affect decision makers: history, system structure, and international norms. The effects of these contexts are explored by viewing context in turn as cause, as changing meaning, and as a barrier. The book engages with the literature on structural realism and international regimes, and uses rational actor and diffusion models as theoretical references. A number of concrete studies are provided using these contextual tools, including oil nationalisation, USSR-East European relations, enduring rivalries, and decolonisation. These empirical examples illustrate the fruitfulness of the contextual approach to international politics.

Making Global Knowledge in Local Contexts

Making Global Knowledge in Local Contexts
Author: Katarzyna Kaczmarska
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2020-04-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429589026

This book draws on extensive ethnographic research undertaken in Russia to show how the wider sociopolitical context – the political system, relationship between the state and academia as well as the contours of the public debate – shapes knowledge about international politics and influences scholars’ engagement with the policy world. Combining an in-depth study of the International Relations discipline in Russia with a robust methodological framework, the book demonstrates that context not only bears on epistemic and disciplinary practices but also conditions scholars’ engagement with the wider public and policymakers. This original study lends robust sociological foundations to the debate about knowledge in International Relations and the social sciences more broadly. In particular, the book questions contemporary thinking about the relationship between knowledge and politics by situating the university within, rather than abstracting it from the political setting. The monograph benefits from a comprehensive engagement with Russian-language literature in the Sociology of Knowledge and critical reading of International Relations scholarship published in Russia. This text will be of interest to scholars and students in International Relations, Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, the Sociology of Knowledge, Science and Technology Studies and Higher Education Studies. It will appeal to those researching the knowledge-policy nexus and knowledge production practices.

Critical Theory of International Politics

Critical Theory of International Politics
Author: Steven C. Roach
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2013-05-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1135173699

Critical international theory encompasses several distinct, radical approaches that focus on identity, difference, hegemonic power, and order. As an applied theory, critical international theory draws on critical social theories to shed light on international processes and global transformations. While this approach has led to increasing interest in formulating an empirically relevant critical international theory, it has also revealed the difficulties of applying critical theory to international politics. What are these difficulties and problems? And how can we move beyond them? This book addresses these questions by investigating the intellectual currents and key debates of critical theory, from Kant and Hegel to Habermas and Derrida, and the recent work of critical international theory, including Robert Cox and Andrew Linklater. By drawing on these debates, the book formulates an original theory of complementarity that brings together critical theory and critical international theory. It argues that complementarity—a governing principle in international law and politics—offers a conceptual framework for working toward two goals: engaging the changing contexts and forms of resistance and redressing some of the difficulties of applying critical theory to international relations. In adopting three critical perspectives on complementarity to analyze the evolving social and political contexts of global justice, this book provides an essential resource for undergraduate and graduate students and scholars interested in the application of critical theory to international relations.

All International Politics Is Local

All International Politics Is Local
Author: Kristian Skrede Gleditsch
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2009-11-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0472023357

How does regional interdependence influence the prospects for conflict, integration, and democratization? Some researchers look at the international system at large and disregard the enormous regional variations. Others take the concept of sovereignty literally and treat each nation-state as fully independent. Kristian Skrede Gleditsch looks at disparate zones in the international system to see how conflict, integration, and democracy have clustered over time and space. He argues that the most interesting aspects of international politics are regional rather than fully global or exclusively national. Differences in the local context of interaction influence states' international behavior as well as their domestic attributes. In All International Politics Is Local, Gleditsch clarifies that isolating the domestic processes within countries cannot account for the observed variation in distribution of political democracy over time and space, and that the likelihood of transitions is strongly related to changes in neighboring countries and the prior history of the regional context. Finally, he demonstrates how spatial and statistical techniques can be used to address regional interdependence among actors and its implications. Kristian Skrede Gleditsch is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego.

Non-Human Nature in World Politics

Non-Human Nature in World Politics
Author: Joana Castro Pereira
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2020-08-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030494969

This book explores the interconnections between world politics and non-human nature to overcome the anthropocentric boundaries that characterize the field of international relations. By gathering contributions from various perspectives, ranging from post-humanism and ecological modernization, to new materialism and post-colonialism, it conceptualizes the embeddedness of world politics in non-human nature, and proposes a reorientation of political practice to better address the challenges posed by climate change and the deterioration of the Earth’s ecosystems. The book is divided into two main parts, the first of which addresses new ways of theoretically conceiving the relationship between non-human nature and world politics. In turn, the second presents empirical investigations into specific case studies, including studies on state actors and international organizations and bodies. Given its scope and the new perspectives it shares, this edited volume represents a uniquely valuable contribution to the field.

Recognition in International Relations

Recognition in International Relations
Author: C. Daase
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-05-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781137464712

Recognition is a basic human need, but it is not a panacea to all societal ills. This volume assembles contributions from International Relations, Political Theory and International Law in order to show that recognition is a gradual process and an ambiguous concept both in theory and political practice.

International Political Economy in Context

International Political Economy in Context
Author: Andrew C. Sobel
Publisher: CQ Press
Total Pages: 816
Release: 2013
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1608717119

Focuses on a micro approach to political economy that grounds policy choices in the competitive environments of domestic politics and decision-making processes.

Post-Politics in Context

Post-Politics in Context
Author: Ali Riza Taskale
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2016-04-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317282485

As disciplines, Politics and International Relations remain dominated by ideas drawn from traditions of liberal internationalism and political realism in which political imagination is preoccupied with command and order, rather than with disruption and emancipation. Yet, they have failed to offer adequate answers to why political action is foreclosed in contemporary times. Proposed through a historically informed engagement with seminal thinkers, including Walter Benjamin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, and Michel Foucault, and examples from films and contemporary events, Ali Rıza Taşkale presents an original and much needed new perspective to interpret politics in our contemporary societies. He argues that post-politics is a counterrevolutionary logic which aims to create a society without conflict, struggle and radical systemic change. Post-Politics in Context serves as seminal intervention upon the debate over the depoliticised conditions of contemporary neoliberal society as well as functioning as an introduction to the core theoretical frameworks of alternative tradition of social and political thought in a manner that is lacking in current debates about Politics and International Relations.

The Oxford Handbook of International Political Theory

The Oxford Handbook of International Political Theory
Author: Chris Brown
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 737
Release: 2018
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 019874692X

International Political Theory (IPT) focuses on the point where two fields of study meet - International Relations and Political Theory. It takes from the former a central concern with the 'international' broadly defined; from the latter it takes a broadly normative identity. IPT studies the 'ought' questions that have been ignored or side-lined by the modern study of International Relations and the 'international' dimension that Political Theory has in the past neglected. A central proposition of IPT is that the 'domestic' and the 'international' cannot be treated as self-contained spheres, although this does not preclude states and the states-system from being regarded by some practitioners of IPT as central points of reference. This Handbook provides an authoritative account of the issues, debates, and perspectives in the field, guided by two basic questions concerning its purposes and methods of inquiry. First, how does IPT connect with real world politics? In particular, how does it engage with real world problems, and position itself in relation to the practices of real world politics? And second, following on from this, what is the relationship between IPT and empirical research in international relations? This Handbook showcases the distinctive and valuable contribution of normative inquiry not just for its own sake but also in addressing real world problems. The Oxford Handbooks of International Relations is a twelve-volume set of reference books offering authoritative and innovative engagements with the principal sub-fields of International Relations. The series as a whole is under the General Editorship of Christian Reus-Smit of the University of Queensland and Duncan Snidal of the University of Oxford, with each volume edited by a distinguished pair of specialists in their respective fields. The series both surveys the broad terrain of International Relations scholarship and reshapes it, pushing each sub-field in challenging new directions. Following the example of the original Reus-Smit and Snidal The Oxford Handbook of International Relations, each volume is organized around a strong central thematic by a pair of scholars drawn from alternative perspectives, reading its sub-field in an entirely new way, and pushing scholarship in challenging new directions.