European Journal of International Relations

Publisher:: Sage Publications, Inc.
Publication date:: 2021-09-06

ISBN:: 1354-0661

Issue Number

No. 30-4, December 2024

Latest documents

Uncertainty in times of ecological crisis: a Knightian tale of how to face future states of the world
How do we face uncertainty in times of crisis? Debates in International Relations often struggle to disentangle the processes involved in turning the uncertainty of a crisis into decisions and actions. Drawing on the analysis of Frank H. Knight, we argue that decisions and actions taken by international actors in times of crisis are underpinned by the way that information is accessed, interpreted, and evaluated in order to claim reliable knowledge for shaping future states of the world. We illustrate our argument with the global politics of the ecological crisis and three contrasting methods used by international actors to convert the time of the crisis into decisions and actions: United Nations agencies, financial accounting standard-setters and central banks.
A partial conversion: how the ‘unholy trinity’ of global economic governance adapts to state capitalism
To what extent is neoliberal global economic governance transforming in a world where states play greater roles as promoters, supervisors and owners of capital? Do these transformations signal a potential paradigm shift? To answer these questions, we focus on global financial governance and the trade and investment regime. We analyse recent policy documents from the IMF, World Bank and WTO – the ‘Unholy Trinity’ of neoliberal global governance. Our analysis reveals a growing acceptance of state interventionism within and across these organizations. Although this accommodation is significant, we argue that it constitutes a limited transformation. We observe attempts to incorporate emerging state interventionist practices and state-owned entities into established governance arrangements in order to discipline, curtail and control them. We argue that this does not signify a shift towards post-neoliberal plurality within Western-dominated global economic governance, but rather a defensive, ‘mutating neoliberalism’ which seeks to incorporate depoliticized and commercially oriented state ownership into its mainframe.
Keep your enemies safer: technical cooperation and transferring nuclear safety and security technologies
Even during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union cooperated on nuclear safety and security. Since accidental or unauthorized nuclear detonations anywhere threaten peace everywhere, it seems straightforward that states more experienced in developing nuclear safety and security technologies would transfer such methods to other states. Yet, the historical record is mixed. Why? While existing explanations focus on the political costs and proliferation risks faced by the transferring state, this article argues that specific technological features condition the feasibility of assistance. For more complex nuclear safety and security technologies, robust technical cooperation is crucial to build the necessary trust for scientists to transfer tacit knowledge without divulging sensitive information. Leveraging elite interviews and archival evidence, my theory is supported by four case studies: US sharing of basic nuclear safety and security technologies with the Soviet Union (1961–1963); US withholding of complex nuclear safety and security technologies from China (1990–1999) and Pakistan (1998–2003); and US sharing of complex nuclear safety and security technologies with Russia (1994–2007). My findings suggest the need to examine not only the motivations behind nuclear assistance but also the process by which it occurs and the features of the technologies involved, with implications for how states cooperate to manage the global risks of emerging technologies.
‘100 large fruit trees cut down by ISAF’: land, infrastructure and military violence
This article examines the military violence of land use and infrastructure. The analysis discusses the case of the British Army’s Royal Corps of Engineers in 1860s British Columbia and in Helmand, Afghanistan following the post-2001 invasion. It charts how across British colonial and liberal military projects, military infrastructure activities have mobilised towards the goal of capitalist development. Drawing analytic lines between the Royal Engineers’ activities establishing the settler colony and colonial capitalism in British Columbia and their role in imposing liberal social, political and economic norms in Helmand, the article puts forward an account of why, how and with what effect military violence can include things such as the felling of trees, the issuing of private land title, the use of topsoil for road fill or prohibiting local farmers from growing tall crops near a roadway. The central argument of this article is that we should conceptualise and understand military activities such as these as violence. This analysis develops understandings of violence within scholarship addressing coloniality, liberal war, settler colonialism; and land, territory and infrastructure. Beyond the immediate analysis of specifically military violence, this discussion has broader implications for understanding the nexus of infrastructure, land and violence.
Capitalizing on a crisis: the European Union Trust Fund for Africa
How do foreign policies and transnational projects become resistant to critique? This article seeks to better understand the legitimation of policies by studying the work involved in justifying public funding of migration and development initiatives. Government expenditures on migration and development have been increasing in recent years, despite widely shared concerns regarding the merits of such initiatives. In this article, we focus our attention on the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF). The EUTF has been assessed by EU agencies as a successful intervention, while never hiding its inability to achieve demonstrable progress toward its goals of addressing the “root causes” of the 2015–2016 migration “crisis” in the Mediterranean. We argue that this fund was legitimized as a valuable policy intervention through the efforts of European officials and Monitoring and Evaluation experts to, borrowing from Bourdieu, “convert capital”: translate one form of power resource into another form. Based on document analysis and 25 key informant interviews, we trace how EUTF officials successfully converted capital by, first, mobilizing political resources to generate economic capital for migration-related projects in Africa; and second, transforming some of this economic capital into more lasting symbolic capital which justifies long-term migration and development initiatives. In short, money becomes legitimacy. We argue that this “conversion work” helps us to better understand the continued growth and upholding of migration and development financing which consists not only of raw funds but also involves continuous efforts to legitimize these expenditures as inherently valuable policy interventions.
Private infrastructure in geopolitical conflicts: the case of Starlink and the war in Ukraine
Privately owned infrastructures play a central role in the unfolding of geopolitical conflicts. While academic contributions generally support this argument, businesses are mostly treated as enablers or spoilers of state action rather than actors in their own right. This article develops a theoretical framework around the relationship of state and transnational corporations in times of intense global competition, combining it with a political–economic perspective on how private ownership of transnational infrastructures shifts this relationship. It argues that private businesses develop and operate infrastructures for profit-seeking purposes, but that this logic can be amended by preferences for political outcomes. The article undertakes an analysis of the role of Starlink, the world’s largest satellite constellation owned by US-based company SpaceX, in the events following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It reconstructs SpaceX’s initial decision to enable Starlink in Ukraine and its ensuing strategic readjustment that limited Ukraine’s abilities to retake Russian-occupied areas. The findings support the relevance of both profit-seeking and political motives for explaining businesses’ decision-making, with substantial implications for contemporary state–business relations. SpaceX viewed the war in Ukraine as an opportunity to secure capital and contracts, largely from the United States; at the same time, it sought to appease other states on which it depends, most centrally China. The findings furthermore demonstrate that states will seek to reestablish independence from private infrastructure where other forms of hedging fail. While China and the European Union opted to build their own satellite constellations, the United States relied on its economic pull to ensure SpaceX’s cooperation.
Voice, exit . . . arbitrage: the politics of the modern multinational firm
Multinational corporations (MNCs) are often seen as singular organizations, with a parent company controlling branches in other countries. But this is an abridged version of decentred corporate groups structured as clusters of separate legal entities in several jurisdictions held together by equity ties. The article argues that while the abridged version of the MNC matches those aspects of those organizations that are of interest to economists, it fails to capture the principal mechanism of interaction between business and the institutional and political environment. I argue that the abridged version is a barrier preventing political scientists from asking salient questions about the power of MNCs and their shareholders. Specifically, while political scientists and international political economists discuss the way these companies use their considerable financial resources to voice their views on unwanted regulatory changes, to threaten exit or if all else fails, to carry through with the threat, they ignore a third approach favoured by corporate groups, setting up subsidiaries in third countries to arbitrage rules.
Technocracy, populism, and the (de)legitimation of international organizations
Our understanding of the contestation of liberal international order relies on an intuitive dualism. Technocratic norms underpin the legitimation of international organizations (IOs) because IOs embody a functional and depoliticized mode of problem-solving based on expertise and non-majoritarianism. Populist norms challenge IO authority as IOs create constraints on the popular will of the “true people.” We empirically examine whether this duality extends to the actors engaging in IO (de)legitimation by leveraging a novel and unprecedentedly fine-grained database on IO (de)legitimation by national governments. We find that (de)legitimation patterns of governments with technocratic or populist tendencies are far more dynamic and diverse than a dualistic account suggests. In particular, we find complex patterns of (de)legitimation that suggest challenges to and defenses of IO authority are driven more by a strategic, as opposed to an ideological, logic. We outline implications for the literatures on the international liberal order, technocracy, and populism.
How informality keeps multilateralism going: the role of informal groupings in EU foreign policy negotiations
Informal groupings of states – either as stand-alone entities or as part of formal international organizations (IOs) – are playing an increasingly important role in sustaining multilateralism and global governance. But what is it about the informal nature of these groupings that makes them such a critical and increasingly popular fixture of international cooperation? To answer this question, the paper focuses on the role of informal groupings in European Union (EU) foreign policy negotiations. Within the EU, informal groupings provide a key venue for coordination, information-sharing, learning and consensus-building. As a result, these groupings are critical for the functioning of the formal decision-making process, providing necessary building blocks for the success of multilateral diplomacy. The proposed argument is explored in the case of two distinct instances of informal groupings, one extra- and one intra-EU grouping, by means of document analysis and elite interviews with national diplomats. First, the paper examines the role of the G7 contact group in the formulation of the Russian sanctions back in 2014. Second, it assesses the role of the PESCO 4 in driving the establishment of the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO). In both instances, informal groupings provided important venues for coordination, as well as information-sharing, learning and consensus-building, which, in turn, enable and sustain multilateral negotiations among 27 member states. Critically engaging with the role of informal groupings in formal IOs, the paper sheds light on the dynamic relationship between informality and minilateralism, on the one hand, and formal multilateral institutions, on the other.
Beyond authority: governing migration and asylum through practice on the ground
How do international organizations (IOs) govern transnational challenges? Most theories maintain that IOs exercise authority to govern. What these authority-focused accounts tend to overlook, however, are instances of de facto governance. Especially in emerging, contested, and crisis-ridden issue areas, authority has often not been established or become unsettled. Yet, IOs govern here, too. Take the example of migration and asylum: This policy field is characterized by institutional and policy gaps. During the crisis at Europe’s border in 2015–2016, IOs governed mixed movements nonetheless. Through organizing collective action on the ground, they not only created direct regulative impacts on the lives of people on the move (the final addressees of international politics) but also defined what mixed migration means as a global policy concern. I draw on practice theory and fieldwork at the European external border in Greece to draw attention to governing modes that operate at a very low institutional threshold. I propose a minimal conception of governance that shifts attention from authority sources to governing effects to account for such governance forms. This re-conceptualization makes the study of how IOs govern outside their established authority, in concrete geographical places, possible.