Suchergebnisse

Research of geopolitical phenomena and processes is being characterized by
the scholarly tendency to opt for qualitative research strategies with the
complementary use of descriptive statistical methods. The states? behaviour
within the international system in the manner of conducting their
geopolitical code has not been the subject of significant quantitative
interest in academic thought over the last decades of the 20th century. A
massive emergence of datasets as instruments of quantification, which index
geopolitical phenomena, has been accompanied by the rise of quantitative
geopolitical studies at the end of the last century. This paper aims to
present the current situation in academic discourse related to the review of
the most used quantitative methods in the study of geopolitical phenomena
and to analyze the interpretation of the findings of such research. The key
advantage of quantifying geopolitical phenomena is also their biggest
problem - the data sources diversity used to quantify different phenomena
results in many inconsistencies, ranging from research practices, research
methods and techniques to the interpretation of statistical findings. Based
on the review of existing literature regarding the shatterbelt concept and
insights into some of the individual quantitative research, the author
preliminary defines three research stages in the quantification of
geopolitics and concludes the quantitative approach is underdeveloped in the
study of this scientific discipline. In addition, existing data collection
and collection methods and techniques are not sufficiently systematic or
uniform, but provide a fruitful basis for considering long-term processes
taking place in a particular geographical area.

The ideas of the democratic (separate) peace originally exposed during the
Enlightenment period have been further explained during the 1980s, by
entitling this issue within the academic discourse and setting up its
theoretical foundations. The fruitfulness of quantitative empirical
researches of the democratic peace theory had as its consequence many papers
which were dedicated to these topics. Most of them have been taking into
consideration very wide time framework of investigation which implied the
usage of an uneven methodological data processing from different periods and
have led to bad validity of the final results. This has become very
significant when the authors were presenting diametrically different results
using the completely same methodology. The interpretation of both results and
basic theoretical foundations on which the theory is based on, also represent
significant problem without achieved consensus within the academic community.
This paper aims at empirically research the explanatory potential of the
democratic peace theory in contemporary system of the international
relations. By combining the data on conflict intensity taken from the
Heidelberg Peace Research Institute (HIIK), and the data on the democratic
level of states by Polity4 datasets, the authors tried to investigate the
main hypothesis of the theory - whether the democratic states are less war
prone in their interdependent relations? The research was conducted on 1985
registered conflicts within the 5 years term from 2010 to 2014. According to
the extensive interpretations of the results, the starting hypothesis has
been confirmed, but when it comes to the restrictive interpretation, the
claims of the theory, that democracies are less war prone, have been
rebutted.

The study discusses how the concept of evil is positioned in the current theoretical discussion in international relations and how it is discursively misapplied in the imperial practice of preserving and advancing liberal peace in the early twenty-first century. The authors first present the fundamental assumptions embedded in the notion and typology of evil, and then delve into how Rousseau?s and Kant?s conception of the origin of moral evil has indirectly affected the differentiation of epistemological approaches in the study of the dark side of international relations. In terms of the situational legitimization of evil actions, the significance of a group acting evil, the relativization of empathic reactions, and the imperial tactics of utilizing ethical arguments against the so-called illiberal states, the analysis focuses on the contradictions that arise in the process of evaluating evil in the whirlwind of world politics. The authors also present some viewpoints that are to explain the ways and encourage the overcoming of Otherness in world politics through self-transformation and the transformation of relations with Others. The authors conclude that the idea of evil, as interpreted in the optics of the prevailing positivist epistemology in the International Relations discipline, equally in (neo)realism and liberal institutionalism, still provides a (pseudo)legitimation basis for the politics of liberal interventionism of post-industrial democracies against the ?rogue? countries from the global periphery.

The Common Security and Defence Policy of the European Union (EU CSDP) integration, presents the unique type of integration at the supranational level. As a major part of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (EU CFSP), range of the EU CSDP is not strictly limited to its member states, but open to the candidate countries as well. This paper aims to inspect to what extent the general integration process with the European Union correlates with the CFSP/CSDP one. For the study cases, Turkey and Serbia has been chosen. Authors have used the European Commission`s annual Progress Reports for the two countries for the last 10 years (2016 inclusive), in order to determine the quality and level of integration at the EU CFSP/CSDP field.