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East Asia is a region of signal importance for global order because of its economic dynamism and growing heft, China's challenge to the United States as incumbent regional and global hegemon, and other conflict hotspots like the Korean peninsula. This requires academic analysis that both appreciates the subtleties inherent to this region and can relate them to the wider systemic context. Many analysts have begun to allude to the challenging characteristics that are present in the international relations of East Asia, in particular struggling to explain how growing levels of economic interdependence can coexist with heightened security tensions. This article offers a research prospectus that suggests ways of analyzing these apparently contradictory trends. It proposes the development of research questions and approaches that are more suited to studying the international relations of a region with characteristics that we define as dual, hybrid, and contingent. We propose a Conjunctions Analytical Framework that explores what happens at the conjunctions of the regional-global and the unit-regional/global levels of analysis—the "grey areas" where social formations meet and interact. We aim to help shape the future study of the IR of East Asia and to suggest more effective ways of analyzing the complex reality of East Asia's regional and global politics.

Denied status claims can produce serious interstate conflict and accommodation may thus be an important means of avoiding conflict with rising and reemerging status seekers such as China and Russia. But accommodation is an underdeveloped concept. This article draws on scholarship about recognition and hierarchy to propose a novel means of understanding status accommodation: as behavior that sends signals to status seekers about the validity of claims to stratified rights. This framework implies that acts that signal status denial (and thus cause conflict over status) may be driven by three broad kinds of processes: anxiety about a state's position in the world; incompatibility between nonstatus interests and claims to status-implicated rights; and fears about the implications of status accommodation for the validity of discourses and ideas that produce both international and domestic order. These dynamics—especially the latter two—may be linked to domestic political mechanisms and concerns in ways that analysts do not fully appreciate. I illustrate the framework by examining the forces that drove the United States to deny Japanese claims to equal status during the decades before World War II.

It is now more than twenty years since Jürgen Habermas's work was first referred to in International Relations (IR) theory. Along with many other continental philosophers and social theorists, Habermas was initially mobilised in the critique of positivism, and in particular neorealism, in IR theory. As such, the interest in Habermas and IR must be located in the first instance within the context of the fourth debate. This Forum section of the Review provides us with the opportunity to take stock and ask whether the dialogue between Habermas and IR has, thus far, been useful in providing new conceptual and methodological tools to analyse international politics and in inspiring new research agendas in IR. We also ask whether the role that dialogue plays within Habermas's work has been useful in formulating a critical theory of international relations.

'Japan's International Relations: Politics, Economics, and Security' by Glenn D. Hook, Julie Gilson, Christopher W. Hughes, and Hugh Dobson is reviewed.

AbstractThis article considers the status of genealogy among research methods currently taught, learned and used in International Relations (IR). The article makes two claims. The first is that genealogy is a unique research tool, but not radically different from the rest of the qualitative-interpretative arsenal more commonly found in the discipline. The second is that genealogy can be used in the pursuit of epistemologically varied truth-claims, including those regarding causal connections.

Summary in English.

"Editorial EYIEL 8 (2017)" -- "Contents" -- "List of Contributors" -- "Part I: Special Focus External Economic Relations of the European Union" -- "Distinguished Essay: A Quiet Revolution-The Changing Nature of the EU´s Common Commercial Policy" -- "1 Introduction" -- "2 The Objectives of the Common Commercial Policy" -- "2.1 Specific Objectives for the Common Commercial Policy" -- "2.2 Internal Policy Objectives" -- "2.3 General External Objectives" -- "2.4 Turning Objectives into Strategy" -- "3 The Scope of the Common Commercial Policy" -- "3.1 From Goods to Services and Intellectual Property Rights" -- "3.2 And Foreign Direct Investment" -- "3.3 Limits to the Common Commercial Policy" -- "4 Decision-Making" -- "4.1 The European Parliament: Consent, Transparency and Public Debate" -- "4.2 The Member States: Exclusivity and Unanimity" -- "5 Conclusion" -- "References" -- "Front-Loading Trade Policy-Making in the European Union: Towards a Trade Act" -- "1 The Problem" -- "2 Forum Shifting in Law-Making" -- "3 The Challenge of Inclusive Participation" -- "3.1 International Law and Diplomacy" -- "3.2 European Union Law Treaty-Making" -- "4 Front-Loading of Trade and Investment Policy-Making" -- "4.1 The Lack of Specific Objectives in Primary Law" -- "4.2 The Role of Negotiating Directives" -- "4.3 The Challenge Ahead" -- "5 The US Trade Act and Trade Promotion Authority (TPA)" -- "5.1 The 1974 Trade Act and Amendments" -- "5.2 Trade Promotion Authority (TPA)" -- "5.3 Assessment" -- "6 Towards an International Trade, Investment and Cooperation Regulation (ITICR)" -- "6.1 Defining Legal Objectives, Goals and Conditions" -- "6.2 The Role of Parliaments of Member States" -- "6.3 Negotiating Mandates" -- "6.4 Package Deal" -- "6.5 Relationship to Mixed Agreements" -- "6.6 The Role of the Judiciary" -- "7 Conclusions" -- "References