Suchergebnisse

Introduction: Contemporary Issues in Caribbean and Latin American Relations -- The Guyana Shield in a Changing Regional Environment: Challenges and Opportunities / by Raymond Mark Kirton -- The Impact of Venezuelan Immigrants on Crime in Trinidad and Tobago: A Critical Evaluation / by Marlon Anatol, Amanda Anatol, and Sacha Joseph-Mathews -- Leveraging the Asylum System to Overcome Immigration Barriers in Small Island States / by Ashaki L. Dore -- To Expand or not to Expand? Utilizing Geopolitical Analysis to Examine CARICOM's Potential Enlargement in the 21st Century / by Kai-Ann D. Skeete -- The Foreign Policy of the Cuban Revolution: Half a Century of Cuba-Caribbean Relations / by Jacqueline Laguardia Martinez and Milagros Martinez Reinosa -- Reflections on the Socially Responsive Regional Integration Process of UNASUR: A Small State Perspective / by Ruben Martoredjo -- Validating the Dimensions of Human Security Using a Factor-Analytic Procedure / by Clement Henry.

This text seeks to explain how political actors know how to change, interpret, and apply the rules that comprise rule-based global order. It argues that actors in world politics are simultaneously engaged in an ongoing social practice of rule-making, interpretation and application.

Abstract
In 2013, despite deteriorating relations between Russia and the United States and increased global contention over cybersecurity issues, participating states in the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly agreed on a landmark report endorsing the applicability of existing international law to state military use of information technology. Given these conditions, the timing of this agreement was surprising. In this article I argue that state representatives engaged in a rule-governed social practice of applying old rules to new cases, and that the procedural rules governing this practice help to explain the existence, timing, and form of the agreement. They also help to explain further agreements expressed in a follow-on report issued in 2015. The findings of the case study presented here demonstrate that social practices of rule-making are simultaneously rule-governed and politically contested, and that outcomes of these processes have been shaped by specialized rules for making, interpreting, and applying rules. The effectiveness of procedural rules in shaping the outcome of a contentious, complex global security issue suggests that such rules are likely to matter even more in simpler cases dealing with less contentious issues.

Most analysts and commentators portray China's conduct in the South China Sea as a series of aggressive norm violations by an emerging peer competitor to the United States. We argue that this narrative misreads both the substance and dynamics of recent Chinese policy. Since 2016, China has strenuously sought – and largely managed – not to be in technical violation of the Philippines Arbitration Tribunal ruling despite having publicly disavowed it and has attempted to position itself as a champion of win–win co-operation. This stands in stark contrast to the previous four years in which China rather shockingly began asserting itself with little regard for either legality or diplomatic nicety – the period in which the "aggressive China" narrative gelled. What explains China's whiplash behaviour? Why has the international community largely failed to notice recent changes and adjust the narrative accordingly? We argue that the answers to these questions lie in an eclectic appeal to bureaucratic struggles, the regime's two-level game balancing domestic and international pressures, and psychological considerations. These do not, however, provide satisfactory accounts either of China's behaviour or of the international response in the absence of recognising the crucial importance of second-order rules for making, interpreting, and applying first-order rules in the international system. Social practices of rule-making, in short, provide vital context. Our analysis suggests a series of takeaways both for International Relations theory and for managing relations with China. (JCSA/GIGA)

Building on John Ruggie's pioneering study of multilateralism, this paper presents an analogous study of multistakeholder governance, or multistakeholderism. Its central argument is that multistakeholderism is, as yet, a much less well-defined institutional form. Cases exhibit significant variation both in the combinations of actor classes entitled to participate and the nature of authority relations among those actors. The first section discusses multistakeholderism as an institutional form, and proposes a taxonomy of its types. This section also briefly addresses the implications of the analysis for International Relations theory. The paper then conducts a comparative analysis of multistakeholderism, applying the taxonomy to five illustrative cases. It demonstrates the degree of inter-case variation, and the range of issue-areas across which the institutional form is employed and invoked by actors. Three cases are drawn from the increasingly contentious area of Internet governance; the paper thus makes a secondary contribution to this growing literature. The paper's most striking finding in this regard is that Internet governance often fails to live up to its multistakeholder rhetoric. Other cases include governance of securities regulation and the governance of corporate social responsibility. The paper concludes by examining the implications of our argument, and identifying areas for further research.