Suchergebnisse

'Coping with the Miracle: Japan's Unions Explore New International Relations' by Hugh Williamson is reviewed.

In this article, I argue that the introduction of ethnography to International Relations has not taken full advantage of the potential of bringing these two fields together. Using international intervention as an example, I suggest that to bring out this potential we need to be more attentive to the classical virtues of ethnography. This means taking the subjects of our studies much more seriously, as people capable of making sense of and reacting to the structures of power they are embedded in. Here implementers tasked to put international policies into action in relation to a concrete context provide an overlooked source of knowledge. Using their experiences, reflections and ways of dealing with the concrete dilemmas that arise in their daily work enables us to analyse intervention as concrete relations of power that play out, affect and are mitigated by people in the field. Seeing knowledge as in this manner arising from the field provides a deeper knowledge that is necessary if we want to read intervention not only as an exertion of power from the international to the local, but as dynamically reshaped, resisted and made sense of in the field.

SCHOLARS OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS HAVE GENERALLY PRESUMED THE EXISTENCE OF SEPARATE AND ANALYTICALLY DISTINCT "LEVELS OF ANALYSIS." FOR REALISTS AND NEO-REALISTS, THE STATE IS CONSIDERED TO ACT MORE OR LESS INDEPENDENTLY OF DOMESTIC SOCIAL FORCES, AND EXPLANATION IS SOUGHT PRIMARILY AT THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEMATIC LEVEL, IN TERMS OF THE IMPERATIVES OF A GIVEN CONFIGURATION OF INTERNATIONAL POWER RELATIONS. OTHER THEORETICAL TRADITIONS REJECT THE ASSUMPTION OF THE CAUSAL PRIMACY OF INTERNATIONAL STRUCTURE, AND THE COROLLARY ASSUMPTION OF THE ANALYTICAL SEPARATION OF STATE AND SOCIETY. FOR THE MOST PART, HOWEVER, "DOMESTIC STRUCTURES" HAVE BEEN GRANTED A STATUS AS A SECOND-ORDER OR SUPPLEMENTARY VARIABLE, SOMETHING TO BE "ADDED ON" TO SYSTEMIC EXPLANATIONS. THIS HAS BEEN PARTICULARLY EVIDENT IN THEORY AND RESEARCH ON CYCLES OF FREE TRADE AND MERCANTILISM. THIS ARTICLE SEEKS TO DEVELOP A MORE SYNTHETIC ACCOUNT OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIETIES, STATES, AND THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY BY ANALYZING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE DOMINANT OR HEGEMONIC POWER AND THE EVOLUTION OF INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING. THE IMPERATIVES OF GLOBAL STRUCTURE CONSIDERED IN ISOLATION FROM DOMESTIC SOCIAL FORCES DO NOT ADEQUATELY EXPLAIN EVENTS. THE GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION OF SHIPPING RESULTS FROM THE MUTUAL INTERACTION OF CONCRETE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC STRUGGLES AMONG CLASSES AND CLASS FRACTIONS WITHIN THE HEGEMONIC POWER AND THE OPPORTUNITIES AND CONSTRAINTS ON A GIVEN INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM.

"There is increasing concern over the behaviour and accountability of international personnel, including CIVPOL contingents, deployed in peace-keeping and peace-building missions throughout the world. From the point of view of local populations the 'internationals' are typically perceived to be 'above the law'. This is directly related to the fact that under status of forces or mission agreements (SOFAs or SOMAs) they are exempt from local host state jurisdiction. There are also significant practical problems in gathering and presenting evidence for disciplinary or criminal proceedings in their home states. This paper will analyse these problems in detail, based on a study of some recent European Union and international missions and suggest how a more co-operative home and host state approach to monitoring, investigation and adjudication of alleged misconduct might achieve more effective accountability and thus contribute to the overall success of CIVPOL missions." [auhtor's abstract]

A BAYESIAN MODEL OF DECISION-MAKING IS FORMULATED TO RECONCEPTUALIZE A RESEARCH PROBLEM REGARDING THE ROLE OF UNCERTAINITY IN THE OCCURANCE OF WAR PRESENTES IN AN ARTICLE BY SINGER GT AL. BY INTRODUCING SUBJECTIVE PROBABILITIES, THE MODEL SHOWS THAT UNCERTAINTY IS NOT ONLY A FACTOR THAT CAN AFFECT A NATION'S CHOICE, BUT THAT IT CAN ALSO BE CREATED TO MASK ITS TRUE INTENTIONS TO ACHIEVE ITS GOALS.

After a short introduction on the historical background of disarmament negotiations, a general classification is proposed & the existing multilateral & bilateral US-USSR agreements are listed with an indication of their main provisions. Different criteria can be used to judge the value & utility, as well as the shortcomings, of the agreements concluded. One possibility is to measure their actual provisions & achievements against the scale envisaged by the program of general & complete disarmament. Another possibility is to set the accords against the overall world or national security balance or imbalance, ie, to attempt to determine whether & how far, international security has been enhanced, considering especially the parallel accumulation of new weapons. Still another method of assessment is to compare the levels of armaments & military expenditures before & after the conclusion of the agreements. Other criteria could be conceived, such as the changed dynamics of the arms race, the interrelation between negotiations & the armaments race, the virtues of the very negotiations process, or historical lessons from disarmament negotiations. Elements of all these approaches are needed to evaluate fully the agreements. Almost all the accords concluded fall within the category of arms control agreements. Only the Bacteriological Convention provides for disarmament--the elimination of an actual weapon. Thus in the process of disarmament negotiations over the last decade the idea of general & complete disarmament, of comprehensive disarmament measures, has been discarded. Disarmament was reduced to limited, partial arms control measures focusing on the ABC weapons--atomic, biological, & chemical. None of the agreements deals with traditional conventional weapons. The accords concluded have one basic flaw: they did not halt the arms race. Both conventional & nuclear weapons, revolutionized by new technology, reached unprecedented levels of sophistication & distruction. Disarmament agreements did not keep pace with the arms race, nor does arms control cope with the technological dynamics of arms development. Prolonged negotiations tend to feed efforts to invent & produce new weapons, initially as 'bargaining chips' in the talks but later assimilated by the military. Since the center of gravity in armaments has moved from quantity to quality, no arms control or disarmament agreement can possibly produce lasting positive results without addressing itself to the problem of military research & development, its scope, mode of operation & performance. Modified AA.

A SIGNIFICANT ADAPTATION HAS RECENTLY OCCURRED IN THE MANDATE OF THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND. WITH NO ALTERATION TO ITS LEGAL CHARTER, THE FUND HAS EFFECTIVELY BECOME THE PROMOTER OF A PUTATIVE CONSENSUS AMONG ITS LEADING MEMBER STATES ON INTRUSIVE NORMS OF INDUSTRIAL REGULATION. THIS ARTICLE DISPUTES THE HISTORICAL UNIQUENESS OF THE TURN UNDERWAY INSIDE POST-WAR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORGANIZATIONS; IT DRAWS PARALLELS TO THE WORK OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD AND TO INCONCLUSIVE MULTILATERAL NEGOTIATIONS IN THE 1940S.

Context and policy challenges. Mozambique's macroeconomic performance remainsrobust, with strong growth and low inflation. In spite of the heightened risks from anuncertain global outlook, growth is expected to be broad-based in the medium termand boosted by the natural resource boom and infrastructure investment.Short-term policy framework. The main short-term challenge is to maintain thegrowth momentum while preserving fiscal and debt sustainability. The 2014 fiscal stanceis expansionary, and fiscal consolidation needs to be initiated in the 2015 budget torestore prudent fiscal management. W

Book Cover; Title; Contents; Acknowledgements; Introduction; The foundations of classical liberalism; What is classical liberalism?; The international political economy of David Hume and Adam Smith: commercial openness, institutional change and unilateral free trade; American excursions: Knight and Viner; The political economy of Frank Knight: classical liberalism from Chicago; Jacob Viner as historian of ideas and international political economist in the classical liberal tradition; German neoliberalism: Eucken, BOhm, ROpke