Reframing the Buffer State in Contemporary International Relations

Reframing the Buffer State in Contemporary International Relations
Author: Bibek Chand
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2023-05-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000868125

This book explores buffer states' agency beyond being highly interactive spaces for the competing strategic and security interests of larger powers. Analyzing 21 political events, the author offers a new conceptual framework for the buffer state, which emphasizes strategic utility and agency. Applying this to the case study of Nepal as a buffer state between India and China, he offers a systematic analysis of Sino-Indian interests in the wider region, and Nepal’s interactions with and reactions to them, and argues that the buffer state in contemporary international relations is characterized by intense competitive overtures from its contending neighboring states. However, the buffer state is not just a spectator but an active participant that consistently assesses and reassesses its geopolitical position in between much larger competing powers. This reading offers a new understanding of the buffer state as a highly dynamic political space wherein the levels of influence and strategies of bigger powers can be examined. Aimed at a multidisciplinary audience, this book will be of particular interest to scholars, practitioners and students of international relations, security studies, strategic studies, and Asian Studies.

Complex Interdependence and China-Australia Relations

Complex Interdependence and China-Australia Relations
Author: Lei Yu
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2023-09-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000957330

This book examines China and Australia’s economic and security relations against the background of China’s increasing economic and political role. Utilizing the theory of complex interdependence, the authors consider whether greater interdependence between Beijing and Canberra augments closer economic cooperation and trade or prompts political leverage and a security challenge. Exploring China-Australia relations from the mainstream Chinese perspective this book will be of interest to scholars and students of international relations, Chinese studies, global political economy, governmental and intergovernmental organizations.

Reframing Transracial Adoption

Reframing Transracial Adoption
Author: Kristi Brian
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2012-05-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1439901856

Until the late twentieth century, the majority of foreign-born children adopted in the United States came from Korea. In the absorbing book Reframing Transracial Adoption, Kristi Brian investigates the power dynamics at work between the white families, the Korean adoptees, and the unknown birth mothers. Brian conducts interviews with adult adopted Koreans, adoptive parents, and adoption agency facilitators in the United States to explore the conflicting interpretations of race, culture, multiculturalism, and family. Brian argues for broad changes as she critiques the so-called "colorblind" adoption policy in the United States. Analyzing the process of kinship formation, the racial aspects of these adoptions, and the experience of adoptees, she reveals the stifling impact of dominant nuclear-family ideologies and the crowded intersections of competing racial discourses. Brian finds a resolution in the efforts of adult adoptees to form coherent identities and launch powerful adoption reform movements.

Reframing the Urban Challenge in Africa

Reframing the Urban Challenge in Africa
Author: Ntombini Marrengane
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2020-12-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1000333531

This book explores the changing dynamics and challenges behind the rapid expanse of Africa’s urban population. Africa’s urban age is underway. With the world’s fastest growing urban population, the continent is rapidly transforming from one that is largely rural, to one that is largely urban. Often facing limited budgets, those tasked with managing African cities require empirical evidence on the nature of demands for infrastructure, escalating environmental hazards, and ever-expanding informal settlements. Drawing on the work of the African Urban Research Initiative, this book brings together contributions from local researchers investigating key themes and challenges within their own contexts. An important example of urban knowledge co-production, the book demonstrates the regional diversity that can be seen as the main feature of African urbanism, with even well-accepted concepts such as informality manifesting in markedly different ways from place to place. Providing an important nuanced perspective on the heterogeneity of African cities and the challenges they face, this book will be an important resource for researchers across development studies, African studies, and urban studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003008385, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

EU Development Policies

EU Development Policies
Author: Sarah L. Beringer
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2019-01-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030013073

“An excellent collection of essays that illustrate how EU member states’ wish to implement normatively inspired policies is confronted with the geopolitical realities of today’s world. The authors succeed in presenting an even-handed account of the way in which the tensions between norms and geopolitics play out, as well as of the responses given by EU policy makers.” —Wil Hout, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, the Netherlands The European Union (EU), while collectively constituting the world’s largest development provider, has come under internal and external pressures over the past decade. This book argues that the EU’s development policies are situated between the bloc’s normative ideals and the global geopolitical realities in which it is embedded. In order to investigate these tensions, it asks how far the 'normative power' Europe concept exists in EU development policies, and how far it is recognizable in the EU’s focus on human rights, the rule of law, and sustainability. In light of the tension in EU development policies between those ideals and the necessity to project neoliberal and geopolitical interests, how do receiving countries perceive the EU’s development efforts? This volume, complete with contributions from academics from a wide range of disciplines based all around the globe, provides answers to these essential questions.

New Challenges and Opportunities in European-Asian Relations

New Challenges and Opportunities in European-Asian Relations
Author: Bibek Chand
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2021-05-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030686329

This book highlights the emerging bidirectional interactions between Europe—primarily the EU—and Asia in the fields of political economy, development, environmental policy, security, diplomacy, and inter-institutional relations within the context of two recent global trends: the rise of China and the growing withdrawal of the U.S. from multilateral commitments. The volume incorporates nine different aspects and dimensions of Asian-European relations. In recent decades, Asia has (re-)gained rising importance on the world stage, which also entails closer interconnections with Europe. In an age of receding American global leadership and reduced commitments to its European allies, the EU and its member states have increasingly become more open to seeking and considering new partnerships. The rising economic prowess of Asia has made it of particular interest for European states. The book’s focus lies on potential challenges and opportunities in the bidirectional interactions between European and Asian states and institutions.

Risk-Taking in International Politics

Risk-Taking in International Politics
Author: Rose McDermott
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2001
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780472087877

Discusses the way leaders deal with risk in making foreign policy decisions

Narratives of Low Countries History and Culture

Narratives of Low Countries History and Culture
Author: Jane Fenoulhet
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2016-11-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1910634972

This edited collection explores the ways in which our understanding of the past in Dutch history and culture can be rethought to consider not only how it forms part of the present but how it can relate also to the future. Divided into three parts – The Uses of Myth and History, The Past as Illumination of Cultural Context, and Historiography in Focus – this book seeks to demonstrate the importance of the past by investigating the transmission of culture and its transformations. It reflects on the history of historiography and looks critically at the products of the historiographic process, such as Dutch and Afrikaans literary history. The chapters cover a range of disciplines and approaches: some authors offer a broad view of a particular period, such as Jonathan Israel's contribution on myth and history in the ideological politics of the Dutch Golden Age, while others zoom in on specific genres, texts or historical moments, such as Benjamin Schmidt’s study of the doolhof, a word that today means ‘labyrinth’ but once described a 17th-century educational amusement park. This volume, enlightening and home to multiple paths of enquiry leading in different directions, is an excellent example of what a past-present doolhof might look like.

China’s Western Frontier and Eurasia

China’s Western Frontier and Eurasia
Author: Zenel Garcia
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2021-09-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000436632

China has emerged as a dominant power in Eurasian affairs that not only exercises significant political and economic power, but increasingly, ideational power too. Since the founding of the People’s Republic, Chinese Communist Party leaders have sought to increase state capacity and exercise more effective control over their western frontier through a series of state-building initiatives. Although these initiatives have always incorporated an international component, the collapse of the USSR, increasing globalization, and the party’s professed concerns about terrorism, separatism, and extremism have led to a region-building project in Eurasia. Garcia traces how domestic elite-led narratives about security and development generate state-building initiatives, and then region-building projects. He also assesses how region-building projects are promoted through narratives of the historicity of China’s engagement in Eurasia, the promotion of norms of non-interference, and appeals to mutual development. Finally, he traces the construction of regions through formal and informal institutions as well as integrative infrastructure. By presenting three phases of Chinese domestic state-building and region-building from 1988-present, Garcia shows how region-building projects have enabled China to increase state capacity, control, and development in its western frontier. Recommended for scholars of China’s international relations and development policy.

Constructivism and International Relations

Constructivism and International Relations
Author: Stefano Guzzini
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2005-12-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134319584

This new book unites in one volume some of the most prominent critiques of Alexander Wendt's constructivist theory of international relations and includes the first comprehensive reply by Wendt. Partly reprints of benchmark articles, partly new original critiques, the critical chapters are informed by a wide array of contending theories ranging from realism to poststructuralism. The collected leading theorists critique Wendt’s seminal book Social Theory of International Politics and his subsequent revisions. They take issue with the full panoply of Wendt’s approach, such as his alleged positivism, his critique of the realist school, the conceptualism of identity, and his teleological theory of history. Wendt’s reply is not limited to rebuttal only. For the first time, he develops his recent idea of quantum social science, as well as its implications for theorising international relations. This unique volume will be a necessary companion to Wendt’s book for students and researchers seeking a better understanding of his work, and also offers one of the most up-to-date collections on constructivist theorizing.