Suchergebnisse

What is a 'global polity' and can it be squared with the continued strength of nation-states? This book argues that our current understanding of globalization makes it impossible to grasp some crucial changes in world politics. Drawing innovatively on both Foucault and Waltz Constructing a Global Polity reframes the debate about global politics by redefining the term 'polity' as a new model of political structure. Unlike hierarchy and anarchy, polity draws attention to how new objects of governance such as the global economy or climate affect the structure of world politics. Through this new lens the author examines the construction of a global polity in the controversy that followed the dramatic 'anti-globalization' protests at global elite gatherings. The findings challenge the standard typology of positions in the globalization debate and suggest that, even while states remain central, the logic of world politics may be shifting in more subtle ways.

While disciplinary identities are among the most fraught subjects in academia, much less attention has been given to what disciplinarity actually entails and what risks different disciplinary strategies involve. This article sets out a theory of disciplinarity that recognises not only their coercive but also their redeeming features, particularly in view of the coexistence of multiple competing disciplines and powerful transdisciplinary movements (such as rationalism). On this basis it identifies four disciplinary strategies and each is assessed in relation to the future of IR: (1) remaining a subdiscipline of Political Science ('stay put'), (2) becoming an interdisciplinary field ('reach out'), (3) dissolving into transdisciplinarity or abolishing IR ('burn down'), or (4) establishing IR as a discipline in its own right ('break out'). Rejecting the false choice of disciplinary constraint versus epistemic freedom, this framework allows IR and other subfields to more consciously consider a range of disciplinary strategies and to entertain the risks and affordances they each offer. The article concludes that a future independent discipline focused on the implications of 'the international' not just for politics but all fields – including disciplinarity – would make for a broader, more diverse IR, ultimately also better able to engage other disciplines.

My response to Justing Rosenberg's 'IR in the Prison of Political Science' article. I emphasise that the international is bundled into the ecological.

Geoengineering technologies aim to make large-scale and deliberate interventions in the climate system possible. A typical framing is that researchers are exploring a 'Plan B' in case mitigation fails to avert dangerous climate change. Some options are thought to have the potential to alter the politics of climate change dramatically, yet in evaluating whether they might ultimately reduce climate risks, their political and security implications have so far not been given adequate prominence. This article puts forward what it calls the 'security hazard' and argues that this could be a crucial factor in determining whether a technology is able, ultimately, to reduce climate risks. Ideas about global governance of geoengineering rely on heroic assumptions about state rationality and a generally pacific international system. Moreover, if in a climate engineered world weather events become something certain states can be made directly responsible for, this may also negatively affect prospects for 'Plan A', i.e. an effective global agreement on mitigation.

Geoengineering technologies aim to make large-scale and deliberate interventions in the climate system possible. A typical framing is that researchers are exploring a 'Plan B' in case mitigation fails to avert dangerous climate change. Some options are thought to have the potential to alter the politics of climate change dramatically, yet in evaluating whether they might ultimately reduce climate risks, their political and security implications have so far not been given adequate prominence. This article puts forward what it calls the 'security hazard' and argues that this could be a crucial factor in determining whether a technology is able, ultimately, to reduce climate risks. Ideas about global governance of geoengineering rely on heroic assumptions about state rationality and a generally pacific international system. Moreover, if in a climate engineered world weather events become something certain states can be made directly responsible for, this may also negatively affect prospects for 'Plan A', i.e. an effective global agreement on mitigation.

Geoengineering – the deliberate manipulation of the climate (more accurately labeled 'climate engineering') – is rising rapidly up the policy agenda. A leading discourse frames it as a 'plan B' that should be prepared in case political obstacles continue to thwart effective mitigation. Diverse geophysical risks are being considered while debate about political risks of 'plan B' have been dominated by worries of 'moral hazard' i.e. that preparing climate engineering technologies could undermine mitigation efforts. This article seeks to broaden the debate to other political and security dynamics. It argues that dividing climate policies into two distinct 'plan A' and 'plan B' has at least three other performative effects: it prioritizes certain fast-working methods such as stratospheric aerosol injection; it assumes this would be politically feasible; and it obscures potential difficulties of pursuing mitigation and climate engineering together. I examine each of these, asking in particular why the politics of climate engineering would be the easier option. I argue that direct and intentional interventions in Earth systems could facilitate securitization by introducing friend-enemy logics, hitherto largely absent from the climate polity – what could be called the 'security hazard'. Alternative framings that might avoid both hazards are briefly suggested for future research. ; Geoengineering technologies aim to make large-scale and deliberate interventions in the climate system possible. A typical framing is that researchers are exploring a 'Plan B' in case mitigation fails to avert dangerous climate change. Some options are thought to have the potential to alter the politics of climate change dramatically, yet in evaluating whether they might ultimately reduce climate risks, their political and security implications have so far not been given adequate prominence. This article puts forward what it calls the 'security hazard' and argues that this could be a crucial factor in determining whether a technology is able, ultimately, to reduce climate risks. Ideas about global governance of geoengineering rely on heroic assumptions about state rationality and a generally pacific international system. Moreover, if in a climate engineered world weather events become something certain states can be made directly responsible for, this may also negatively affect prospects for 'Plan A', i.e. further obstruct an effective global agreement on mitigation.

In its immediate aftermath the Eastern European revolutions of 1989-91 were interpreted as a 'rectifying revolution': the experiment of 1917 had been cast off but the process bequeathed no new ideas. Subsequent debates linked 1989 to novel political methods and a re-launch of 'civil society' but failed to note the significance of dissident and protest movements which relied on environmentalist critiques of industrialism, materialism and top-down government. The article first points to three phases of debate about the legacy of 1989 noting the relative neglect of environmentalism in all of them. Second, it charts the centrality of environmentalist ideas to the early dissidents, the revolutionary movements that mobilised and to the global social movements that have emerged since 1989. The final section argues that this 'green 1989' has been neglected because it fits badly into modernist liberal and post-socialist interpretations of 1989. Instead, using the global age thesis, '1989' is reinterpreted as a staging post in the emergence of a politics based on the limits and risks of the modern project. Adapted from the source document.

In its immediate aftermath the Eastern European revolutions of 1989–91 were interpreted as a 'rectifying revolution': the experiment of 1917 had been cast off but the process bequeathed no new ideas. Subsequent debates linked 1989 to novel political methods and a re-launch of 'civil society' but failed to note the significance of dissident and protest movements which relied on environmentalist critiques of industrialism, materialism and top-down government. The article first points to three phases of debate about the legacy of 1989 noting the relative neglect of environmentalism in all of them. Second, it charts the centrality of environmentalist ideas to the early dissidents, the revolutionary movements that mobilised and to the global social movements that have emerged since 1989. The final section argues that this 'green 1989' has been neglected because it fits badly into modernist liberal and post-socialist interpretations of 1989. Instead, using the global age thesis, '1989' is reinterpreted as a staging post in the emergence of a politics based on the limits and risks of the modern project.