Suchergebnisse

If international relations can be theorised as 'inter-textual', then why not also – or indeed better – as 'inter-carbonic'? For, not only is the modern history of carbon to a large degree international; in addition, many of the key historical junctures and defining features of modern international politics are grounded in carbon or, more precisely, in the various socio-ecological practices and processes through which carbon has been exploited and deposited, mobilised and represented, recycled and transformed. In what follows I seek to make this case, arguing that carbon and international relations have been mutually constitutive ever since the dawn of modernity in 1492, and that they will inevitably remain so well into the future, as the global economy's dependence on fossil carbon continues unabated and the planet inexorably warms. Will climate change generate widespread conflict, or even civilisational collapse? How are contemporary power dynamics limiting responses to climate change? And how, conversely, might 21st-century world order be transformed by processes of decarbonisation? Building on research in political ecology, I argue that a dialectical sensitivity to 'inter-carbonic relations' is required to properly answer these questions. Scholars and students of International Relations (IR), I suggest, need to approach climate change by positioning the element C at the very centre of their analyses.

Over the last decade the global financial system has been shaken by financial crises in emerging economies all over the world. The result of these crises has been turmoil in financial markets, a severe deceleration of economic growth and hardship in the economies involved. The International Monetary Fund was quickly identified as a main culprit and has been the subject of intense debate ever since. While a consensus has developed that the Fund is in need of wide-ranging reforms, an agreement on which reform path to follow is still lacking. An often recurring proposal is to restructure the IMF into an international lender of last resort along the lines developed by Walter Bagehot, then editor of the Economist, in the late 19th century. Although this proposal appears initially suggestive, it has been frequently dismissed out of hand as unrealistic by policy makers as well as academics. The book analyses in detail whether this dismissal is founded or whether a rigourous reform along Bagehotian lines could indeed help to increase the stability of the global financial system