International Relations

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

ISBN:: 0047-1178

Issue Number

No. 38-2, June 2024

Latest documents

Selective humanitarians: how region and conflict perception drive military interventions in intrastate crises
Why are some violent intrastate crises more likely to prompt humanitarian military interventions than others? States appear to intervene robustly in reaction to some internal conflicts, such as Kosovo, but withhold similar options in more intense conflict, as in Darfur. Much of the research on this ‘selectivity gap’ focuses on universal norms or geopolitical interests. I, however, argue that the selectivity of these interventions is a product of regional variations interacting with conflict perceptions. This paper introduces a dataset of almost 1000 observations of intrastate armed conflict between 1989 and 2014, paired with international military responses and non-responses, as well as an Intervention Index that accounts for the intensity of military interventions. I find that once a threshold of human suffering is met via the existence of an internal armed conflict, powerful states will intervene depending on whether the conflict occurs in the Western sphere of influence and whether it is denoted as an identity war. A Western region coupled with no perceptions of identity-based civil war prompts the greatest odds of humanitarian military intervention. Such conclusions carry implications on the role of norms and interests in international politics, as biased by region, and for military intervention as a policy choice.
Globalising the ‘war on terror’? An analysis of 36 countries
The war on terror as a discourse assumes that terrorism is an essential threat of global proportions, is mostly perpetuated by Islamist networks, and requires a strong international response. This discourse had tremendous impacts on both domestic and international politics. Consequentially, a large number of studies analyse the assumptions underlying and the policies legitimised by the war on terror discourse. However, existing work mostly focusses on one or a few cases, predominantly in the global north. This article introduces a novel dataset containing information on the war on terror discourse in the school textbooks of 36 countries, representing around 64% of the world’s population, for the period 2003–2014. Based on this dataset, I present the first comprehensive analysis of the global diffusion of the war on terror discourse. The study finds that the discourse has by no means globalised but is mostly limited to wealthy countries in Europe and North America. There are hence clear limits to the USA’s soft power and the hyper-globalisation of terrorism discourses. Factors like terrorism intensity, armed conflict and authoritarian regime have little predictive power. This is despite clear incentives for challenged (authoritarian) regimes to adapt the war on terror discourse. Contrary to common assumptions in critical security and terrorism studies, the war on terror discourse is hardly associated with an emphasis on terrorists’ irrationality and hatred or with the marginalisation of socio-political grievances.
Strategic culture and competing visions for the EU’s Russia strategy: flexible accommodation, cooperative deterrence, and calibrated confrontation
This article analyzes the national security strategies of EU member states in the 2009–2018 period, and conceptualizes three security strategies EU member states have adopted toward Russia – flexible accommodation, cooperative deterrence, and calibrated confrontation. It tests strategic culture hypotheses against those of realism and commercial liberalism to explain the variation of EU member states’ security strategies toward Russia. While a realist explanation would predict EU member states geographically proximate to Russia would possess more confrontational security strategies, geographic proximity and confrontational security strategies toward Russia are not positively correlated. Bilateral economic interdependence with Russia, the presence of populist parties in EU member states governing coalitions, and EU member states’ alignment or status as an occupied state during the Cold War also do not explain EU member states’ security strategies toward Russia. A more consistent explanation of the variance in EU member states’ policy on Russia revolves around the strategic culture of the state in question. States with a more Atlanticist perspective tend to be more confrontation with Russia than their more Europeanist counterparts, regardless of geographic proximity or economic interdependence with Russia.
Fitting national interests with populist opportunities: intervention politics on the European radical right
As European radical right parties grow in influence, and as foreign and security policy becomes more politicised, these parties have increasing potential to shape national debates on international affairs. This paper shows how radical right opposition parties seek to exploit policy dilemmas surrounding military intervention according to the nature of the political opportunity these dilemmas present in specific national settings. Its findings are based on qualitative comparative case studies of Front National, AfD and UKIP responses to intervention debates surrounding the Syrian civil war in France, Germany and the UK. I find that non-intervention is not an absolute value for radical right parties. Whilst liberal-humanitarian interventions are uniformly rejected, interventions on national security grounds, whether to combat Jihadist threats or prevent uncontrolled migration, prompt a range of responses shaped by the domestic political context. Yet even where these parties back intervention in votes, their discourse focuses on fitting the issue to the populist dimensions of their political agenda, especially attacking mainstream rivals for incompetence, duplicity or incoherence, and failing to protect the sovereignty and ethnic integrity of the nation.
Dealing with guilt and shame in international politics
State and non-state actors often try to provoke moral emotions like guilt and shame to mobilize political change. However, tactics such as `naming and shaming’ are often ineffective, suggesting that policy makers engage in norm violations in ways that minimize moral emotions. We argue that when violating norms, decision makers deal with guilt and shame through coping mechanisms that allow them to pursue policies that contradict their moral standards. We conceptualize guilt and shame as two separate phenomena that provoke distinct reactions. Shame is more likely to provoke immature defenses like denial and distortion, while guilt provokes a more mature and reparative reaction. We provide empirical evidence for this theory by examining two crucial issues on the state of Israel’s political agenda during the first decade of its existence. We analyze political debates over the return of the Palestinian refugees and the reparation agreement between Israel and West Germany, using a series of primary sources from three different political forums.
Pluralism, plurality and interdisciplinary relations in IR: shifting theoretical directions
Despite concerns over the discipline’s state of ‘fragmentation’, there is no systematic empirical analysis of how this theoretical proliferation is driven by ‘importing’ from other fields. This paper attempts to fill this gap by analysing data collected from American, European, British and Japanese journals during 2011–2015. It argues that interdisciplinary relations are not only fuelling theoretical proliferation in the field but are also creating distinct directions for IR scholarship: a new ‘transatlantic divide’ between sub-disciplinary specialisation and broadening of the disciplinary contours in the English-speaking ‘core’, continued compliance with theoretical and methodological unity of the field in the non-English-speaking ‘semi-periphery’ and parts of the ‘periphery’, and a full embrace of interdisciplinarity in other parts of the ‘periphery’. These images each symbolise the direction that IR as a discipline is (or should be) heading, which will also imply a shift in what gets accepted as ‘IR’ in the coming decades.
Is the liberal order on the way out? China’s rise, networks, and the liberal hegemon
Recent criticisms by leaders and scholars have raised questions about prospects for survival of the liberal world order as well as the relationship between American hegemony and order. The three books discussed in this essay have similar diagnoses of problems in the liberal order but differ in their prognoses. Yan’s Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers offers an alternative model for leadership of the world order – humane authority. Cooley and Nexon’s Exit from Hegemony maintains that US hegemony is gone for good and the liberal world order is unraveling due to the rise of great power challengers, changing behavior by smaller states, and anti-liberal transnational movements. Ikenberry’s World Safe for Democracy argues that current problems are due to attempted global extension of the liberal order. The liberal order should be restored to its original purpose of providing a protective environment for liberal democracies. All three books emphasize the role of domestic political governance and moral values in contributing to global leadership.
Conflict and Covid-19: exploring the effects on women
What happens when conflicts collide with major disease pandemics? Weak or fragmented institutions, contested legitimacy of authorities, overstretched or destroyed health sector, crowded refugee camps and population flows are but some of the characteristics of conflict-affected societies rendering them vulnerable to pandemics such as Covid-19. Importantly, societal crises are deeply gendered; women and men experience conflicts and are affected by them in profoundly different ways. Focusing on the ‘first wave’ of Covid-19 in 2020, I map out the gendered impacts of Covid-19 in conflict-affected societies with particular focus on women. I situate their experience of the dual crisis in the context of ‘vulnerability multipliers’ that limit the ability of individuals to manage societal crises. I find that the pandemic and policy responses to it exacerbated multiple forms of gendered insecurity. They include physical, economic and health insecurities as well as increasing political marginalisation. All this points to multiple, overlapping insecurities operating simultaneously, leading to ‘layered violence’ whereby the pre-existing violence against women and girls escalates, subjecting them to more intense forms of harm.
Western populism and liberal order: a reflection on ‘structural liberalism’ and the resilience of Western liberal order
The rise of populism in Western democracies creates presumed threats on liberal international order. Although a number of scholarly works are dedicated to the populist challenge on liberal democracy, the analysis of populism’s implications on the liberal order is limited. This paper deliberates on a concise review of the consequences of populism on the Western liberal order. In order to delineate the study, the article is devoted to the Western populism and its implications on liberal order. The paper, while analyzing the components of liberal international order by drawing on the analytical framework of structural liberalism, intends to claim that populism has adverse consequences on certain elements of the order than others. However, the implication is not an inflection point for the Western liberal order. Furthermore, this paper also provides some explanations behind the limitations of the populist threats to the Western liberal order. The main argument to highlight is that populism is detrimental more to liberal democracy than to the liberal order itself, and the Western liberal order has the capacity to withstand the tide of populism.
Disentangling populism and nationalism as discourses of foreign policy: the case of Greek foreign policy during the Eurozone crisis 2010-19
Populism and nationalism are often grouped together as phenomena challenging international cooperation. This article argues that, despite these similarities, international relations and foreign policy scholarship can and should distinguish analytically between them. Populism and nationalism differ in how they visualise and articulate the boundaries of the political community and its relationship with political authority. Also, populism can be distinguished from nationalism in that the political community it discursively constructs and mobilises is temporally and territorially particularistic, holding different interests from those of the historically universal nation. These differences imply that populism and nationalism express themselves in distinct, although often overlapping, discourses in foreign policy. The article develops a typology of foreign policy discourses created by the intertwining of populism and nationalism and applies it to an analysis of Greek foreign policy during the decade of the Eurozone crisis (2010–19).