Suchergebnisse

Defence date: 27 November 2015 ; Examining Board: Prof. Dirk Moses, EUI (supervisor); Prof. Ann Thomson, EUI; Dr. Bernhard Struck, University of St. Andrews; Prof. Georgios Varouxakis, Queen Mary, University of London ; For the last twenty years, the rhetoric of civilization has clawed its way back into international discourse, and into books and articles written by political scientists and scholars of international relations. Most of these emphasize the close connection between the concept of civilization and colonialism, suggesting that the main purpose of civilizational language in international relations has always been an imperial one. In this thesis, I argue that such interpretations are mistaken, and use British and German debates to retrace the complex political development of a concept at once popular and indeterminate, which Bismarck referred to as being covered by a 'glittery fog'. I argue that political civilizational language first started to be advanced by European liberals, who were not advocating colonialism, but instead opposing dynastic and non-national politics within Europe. Following these debates, the rhetoric of civilization was first officially employed in the Crimean War, and from then on remained an important fixture primarily of inner-European politics. The wars of the 1860s that followed in its wake were, I argue, as much wars about the correct definition of civilization, as they were about nationalism. It was only in the 1870s that the concept of civilization started to acquire the global profile and sometimes imperial connotation so often associated with it and the nineteenth century in general. But the bloom of this civilizational language was a short one. From the 1880s onwards, the appeal of civilization started to decline as the critique of modernity and its negative effects, first voiced by socialists and radicals, started to reach mainstream liberalism. With the end of the nineteenth century, I argue, the classic language of civilization also came to an end. Larger sections of the European public started to question the ulterior motives behind civilizational language and the main conflicts of the turn of the century, the Boer war and the Boxer rebellion, also produced new discourses of civilizational plurality, through which appeals to the singular of civilization became ever more difficult.

Les guerres d'Afghanistan et d'Irak lancées au lendemain des attentats du 11 septembre 2001 ont été présentées par l'administration Bush comme étant des réponses directes à la menace représentée par le terrorisme transnational et, plus particulièrement, à la menace générée par ses mouvances islamistes radicales. L'usage de la force s'est donc accompagné, de manière très classique, d'un discours sur l'« ordre » - ou plutôt le rétablissement de l'ordre – et la sécurité internationale qui va constituer la pierre angulaire de l'action américaine et de sa légitimation. Pourtant, loin de se traduire par un processus d'éradication de la violence politique, la période nous séparant des attentats de 2001 a, au contraire, été marquée par des attentats de grande ampleur tant en Europe qu'en Asie ou en Afrique tandis que les conflits afghans et, surtout, irakiens ne laissent pas entrevoir, à moyen terme du moins, une possible pacification. Ainsi, au lieu de favoriser un processus de pacification, l'option adoptée par l'administration américaine semble plutôt contenir en elle les germes d'un désordre international accru. Cette situation à première vue paradoxale ne peut que nous amener à nous interroger sur les fondements et la signification de la stratégie de la "guerre au terrorisme". Dans cette perspective, nous reviendrons dans un premier temps sur le processus de légitimation de l'action militaire mis en œuvre dans le cadre des opérations conduites en Afghanistan et en Irak. Nous montrerons en particulier comment les schémas argumentatifs mobilisés à cette occasion ont établi, parfois contre toute évidence, une articulation complexe entre les différentes figures de la menace constituées par le terrorisme international, les armes de destruction massive et la figure des "Etats-voyous" (A). Nous verrons ensuite que ce discours sur la menace – caractéristique de la politique stratégique américaine actuelle – n'a pas seulement permis la légitimation de l'objectif de la lutte contre le terrorisme mais qu'il a également permis, de part sa nature fondamentalement insécurisante, la validation politique de thèses et de représentations du monde véhiculées bien avant les attentats du 11 septembre mais jusqu'alors considérées comme trop extrêmes (B). Nous montrerons enfin que ce même discours permet aujourd'hui d'assurer la légitimation et la reproduction de cette politique dont les traits distinctifs sont l'unilatéralisme et la prédilection pour l'interventionnisme militaire (C).

Les guerres d'Afghanistan et d'Irak lancées au lendemain des attentats du 11 septembre 2001 ont été présentées par l'administration Bush comme étant des réponses directes à la menace représentée par le terrorisme transnational et, plus particulièrement, à la menace générée par ses mouvances islamistes radicales. L'usage de la force s'est donc accompagné, de manière très classique, d'un discours sur l'« ordre » - ou plutôt le rétablissement de l'ordre – et la sécurité internationale qui va constituer la pierre angulaire de l'action américaine et de sa légitimation. Pourtant, loin de se traduire par un processus d'éradication de la violence politique, la période nous séparant des attentats de 2001 a, au contraire, été marquée par des attentats de grande ampleur tant en Europe qu'en Asie ou en Afrique tandis que les conflits afghans et, surtout, irakiens ne laissent pas entrevoir, à moyen terme du moins, une possible pacification. Ainsi, au lieu de favoriser un processus de pacification, l'option adoptée par l'administration américaine semble plutôt contenir en elle les germes d'un désordre international accru. Cette situation à première vue paradoxale ne peut que nous amener à nous interroger sur les fondements et la signification de la stratégie de la "guerre au terrorisme". Dans cette perspective, nous reviendrons dans un premier temps sur le processus de légitimation de l'action militaire mis en œuvre dans le cadre des opérations conduites en Afghanistan et en Irak. Nous montrerons en particulier comment les schémas argumentatifs mobilisés à cette occasion ont établi, parfois contre toute évidence, une articulation complexe entre les différentes figures de la menace constituées par le terrorisme international, les armes de destruction massive et la figure des "Etats-voyous" (A). Nous verrons ensuite que ce discours sur la menace – caractéristique de la politique stratégique américaine actuelle – n'a pas seulement permis la légitimation de l'objectif de la lutte contre le terrorisme mais qu'il a également permis, de part sa nature fondamentalement insécurisante, la validation politique de thèses et de représentations du monde véhiculées bien avant les attentats du 11 septembre mais jusqu'alors considérées comme trop extrêmes (B). Nous montrerons enfin que ce même discours permet aujourd'hui d'assurer la légitimation et la reproduction de cette politique dont les traits distinctifs sont l'unilatéralisme et la prédilection pour l'interventionnisme militaire (C).

Abstract
Scientists are increasingly specializing to manage the vast knowledge bases within their domains, making knowledge-sharing strategies essential for scientific progress. Among these strategies, international scientific collaboration has increased markedly. We analyse the role of thematic specialization as one of its drivers in the context of Chagas research, a neglected disease. Since there is a strong research tradition in Latin America on this topic, it is an interesting context to study centre-periphery research dynamics. Using a novel bibliometric database on Chagas research during 1990–2019, we exploit its panel structure in a gravity-type econometric model. The findings show that the degree of specialization and its proximity among partners boost joint publications. Both effects are particularly important for country dyads involving authors from the periphery linked to authors in the centre. This paper is the first empirical study to assess the role of specialization as a driver of international scientific collaboration.

AbstractWhy do American perspectives of international relations (IR) continue to hold sway over an increasingly diverse discipline? What actually constitutes "Americanness" in IR? Who is considered "American" in IR? These are the central questions we explore in this essay. Drawing on cognitive and behavioral insights from social psychology, we argue that there is a distinct "American approach" to international relations and security studies and that this approach is a product of Western cognitive frames. We identify three factors that represent the American approach's hyper-Westernized framing: individualism, equality, and a preference for causal rather than contextual analysis, and a preference for egalitarianism. We argue that these are reinforced by two social identity processes—academic identity and national identity. The consequences of "being American" in IR and security studies suggest not only problems of attention and accuracy, but an inherent failure to appreciate that Western—and particularly, American—ways of seeing and valuing the world are not universal.

N° ISBN - 978-2-7380-1284-5 ; International audience ; Relationship between migration, development and agriculture is an old issue which dates back to Lewis and his analysis of rural-urban migration in developing countries. The economic analysis of migration (especially the so-called new economics of labour migration – NELM) has strong connections with the microeconomics of peasant or rural households. NELM particularly focuses on contracts between migrants and their remaining family or community, which leads to remittances. These migrant networks have also been analysed, using the tools of economic sociology or social capital theory, applied to Southern rural societies. If rural migrants in southern countries keep going to the burgeoning cities of most of these countries, Southern rural migration is nowadays very often an international migration, either southsouth or south-north as international migrants coming from the south are mostly rural. Consequently remittances constitutes now a rapidly growing macroeconomic component of the balance of payments of these countries, but also of the non-farm income of rural areas, raising the issue of their contribution to development and poverty alleviation either at a national or local level. In its 2008 WDR on agriculture and development , the World Bank states that migration is one of three possible exits from poverty for rural households, along with the rise of smallholder agriculture productivity and wage opportunities in rural areas. On the other side, in some places, rural livelihoods tend to be more and more disconnected from farm income and agriculture, international migration reinforcing this trend. This paper would like to address the issue of relationship between the development of international migration and its impact on rural and agricultural sustainability. First it will present the main quantitative data on international migration and remittances in Southern countries rural areas. Second it will make a state-of-the-art survey of the debate on relationship between international migration and development. Third, on this basis, it will assess its impact on agricultural and rural sustainability, either social, economic or environmental. It will conclude that, although the impact of migration and remittances on agricultural development is contrasted, international migration and corresponding remittances can broaden the array of opportunities for the population of some rural areas and thus contribute to local sustainability

The insights of social psychology are not thoroughly integrated into international relations theory, yet social psychology has much to offer. Social psychology provides a conceptualization of a number of varieties of trust – moralistic, strategic, and generalized – and their opposites that implicitly drive the logic of major works of international relations. It also reveals the empirical presence of a number of different types of trusters who make different assumptions about the trustworthiness of others and consequently show markedly different propensities towards cooperation. The rough correspondence between these different 'social orientations' and the logics of the three approaches of structural realism, neoliberal institutionalism, and constructivism suggest that individuals carry a crude paradigm in their minds. Metatheoretically, the implication for international relations theory is that scholars capture a part but not the totality of world politics, the behavior of those who trust (or do not trust) in a particular way that matches the logic of their paradigms. Theoretically it suggests a research agenda at multiple levels of analysis, utilizing all of the types of trust and trusters. I review the work of others that offers some preliminary evidence for its plausibility, suggest some hypotheses of my own, and address potential theoretical objections.