Suchergebnisse

Part of a review symposium on Joshua S. Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 2001), lauds the book for its tight organization, lucid writing, & broad coverage. Goldstein wonders whether gender-linked war roles are consistent across culture, time, & space, & pursues the answer down a deeply interdisciplinary path. At its core, Goldstein's work also explores why warfare is a mainly male endeavor. Goldstein's claim that culture influences genetic development is scrutinized before addressing the difficulties of explaining male-female differences. Following a look at the concept of rough-and-tumble play & sex differences in play, it is claimed that Goldstein makes a strong case that culture lays at the root of the male-dominated military system. The problem of resolving the problem of militarized gender identities is addressed. The work of Virginia Woolf is considered in relation to Goldstein's & Francis Fukuyama's before suggesting future research directions. 1 Table, 21 References. J. Zendejas

The academic debate about the end of the Cold War has reached an impasse. Realists draw on evidence of economic decline & external pressure to explain the Soviet Union's retrenchment. Constructivists emphasize ideational change & Mikhail Gorbachev's "new thinking" as the source of accommodation. Neither approach sufficiently accounts for the fact that many powerful Soviet institutions did not support Gorbachev's approach from early on, well before his decisions contributed to the disintegration of the country. Even so, Gorbachev persuaded influential people who disagreed with him to accept his policy proposals. William Riker's concept of heresthetics -- the use of language to manipulate the political agenda -- goes a long way toward explaining Gorbachev's success. Heresthetics could be a way to bridge the gap between realist & constructivist approaches to international relations. Adapted from the source document.

The academic debate about the end of the Cold War has reached an impasse. Realists draw on evidence of economic decline and external pressure to explain the Soviet Union's retrenchment. Constructivists emphasize ideational change and Mikhail Gorbachev's "new thinking" as the source of accommodation. Neither approach sufficiently accounts for the fact that many powerful Soviet institutions did not support Gorbachev's approach from early on, well before his decisions contributed to the disintegration of the country. Even so, Gorbachev persuaded influential people who disagreed with him to accept his policy proposals. William Riker's concept of heresthetics—the use of language to manipulate the political agenda—goes a long way toward explaining Gorbachev's success. Heresthetics could be a way to bridge the gap between realist and constructivist approaches to international relations.

A transnational community of disarmament proponents achieved considerable success in influencing Soviet security policy in the 1980s on several issues, including two examined here: nuclear testing and strategic defenses. Fundamental changes in the Soviet domestic structure after 1989, however, had the paradoxical effect of making transnational actors simultaneously less constrained in promoting their favored policies and less effective in getting them implemented. Transnational relations and domestic structures in combination affect security policy. This interaction likewise has implications for theories of ideas, learning, and epistemic communities.