Suchergebnisse

The concept of security in international relations is highly contested with interventions by different schools of thought challenging the dominant statecentric theorization and practice of the same. This article analyzes the feminist perspective of international security. In doing so, it reiterates the need to redefine security by broadening the contours of the subject matter of international relations. While practices like global policy seem to have incorporated a gender perspective, these shifts have not altered the practice of marginalization of gender issues and feminist theories in international politics. The argument of this article, therefore, is that a feminist perspective of security is essential to bridge this gap between theory and practice.

Sir Herbert Butterfield, Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge (1955–68), Regius Professor of History (1963–68), and author of The Whig Interpretation of History (1931), was one of the leading historians of the twentieth century. A diplomatic historian and student of modern historiography, Butterfield was deeply concerned too with contemporary international relations, wrote much on the subject and, in 1958, created the 'British Committee on the Theory of International Politics'. Drawing upon published and unpublished material, this article seeks to sketch an outline of Butterfield's career and thought, to examine his approach to international relations, and to reconsider his reputation in the field.

COVID-19 infection emerged as a pandemic that fundamentally impacted global health policy, global economy and international relations. Close examination of the crisis reveals the vulnerabilities of the globalised 21st-century society and gives tremendous opportunity to rebuild and strengthen national and international policies for combating world events of widespread impact. From demonstrating the importance of health in transnational politics to exploring international law, policy and negotiation as an important determinant of health, this article delves into COVID-19 in the context of international relations (IR), and the role of IR in mitigation and future pandemic preparedness.

In order to avoid both theoretically eclectic and redundant approaches to constructivism, this article proposes one possible and coherent reconstruction of constructivism understood as a reflexive meta-theory. This reconstruction starts by taking seriously the double sociological and interpretivist turn of the social sciences. Based on `double hermeneutics', constructivism is perhaps best understood by distinguishing its position on the level of observation, the level of action proper, and the relationship between these two levels. On the basis of this distinction, the article argues that constructivism is epistemologically about the social construction of knowledge and ontologically about the construction of social reality. It furthermore asks us to combine a social theory of knowledge with an intersubjective, not an individualist, theory of action. Finally, the analysis of power is central to understanding the reflexive link between the two levels of observation and action. The argument is embedded in a contextualization where constructivism is seen as inspired by `reflexive modernity', as well as more directly by the end of the Cold War.

Modern empirical social science is unique in denying, dismissing, or discounting the role of justice considerations in human behavior. A relatively small group of International Relations (ir) scholars have attempted to address this lacuna, with limited uptake to date. The articles in this issue collectively seek to move this research program forward. In this essay, I explore various conceptual, epistemological, methodological, and sociology-of-the-field issues that may be responsible for its limited traction thus far and argue that only the last represents a serious obstacle. Whether recent trends and developments inirindicate that the time may finally be ripe for a robust normal science on the role of justice considerations in international politics remains to be seen, but negotiation theorists are in the best position to move it forward.

Conventional theories of international relations assume, implicitly, the model of an "inter-state system." According to this model, individually states possess a set of characteristics which differ fundamentally from the characteristics of a system of those states interacting with each other. On this basis we can construct theories about the behavior of component states in the system, and more general propositions about the nature of the inter-state system viewed as a whole. Some of the difficulties of this model will be noted here, and an alternative model proposed.Before pointing to these difficulties, however, we need a clear image of the inter-state model. A classic formulation is contained in a speech given by former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles at a meeting of the American Society for International Law. In it Mr. Dulles identified six characteristics of the nation-state: (1) laws which "reflect the moral judgment of the community"; (2) political machinery to revise these laws as needed; (3) an executive body able to administer the laws; (4) judicial machinery to settle disputes in accord with the laws; (5) superior force to deter violence by enforcing the law upon those who defy it; and (6) sufficient well-being so that people are not driven by desperation to ways of violence. The international system, Mr. Dulles pointed out, in large part lacks these characteristics. He went on to assess the limited success of attempts, ranging from the League of Nations and Kellogg-Briand Pact through the United Nations, to create such a "state system" or "order" at the international level. Mr. Dulles sadly reported that, despite notable progress in the development of international law and judicial machinery, the desired international order does not, as yet, exist.