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According to the nature of the Westphalian system, the independent state is the central actor in international relations. However, the discipline has not developed theoretical approaches regarding the independence process, which is considered more a concern of the international law and the political interests of state actors. Then, in this article, the issue of independence is analyzed as a basic step for political entities to access statehood, becoming a basisfor understanding the role of the independent state in the Westphalian order. It is necessary to observe the variations in the conception of independence, especially regarding self-determination and recognition principle, acknowledging the existence of deep changes in the international system. This principle has had greater relevance since the 1990s due to the disintegration processes of some countries, particularly the case of Kosovo. Taiwan is also a relevant experience. Another key point is the weakening process of the state, with the appearance of variants that question the status and existence of the state actor. At the end of this paper, a brief reference is made to the Latin and Central Americanexperience, which shows particularities since the 19th century. ; El actor central en las relaciones internacionales es el Estado soberano independiente, según la naturaleza del sistema westfaliano; sin embargo, en la disciplina no se han desarrollado enfoques teóricos sobre el proceso de independencia. Se considera más un asunto del derecho internacional y de los intereses políticos de los actores estatales. Por ello, se analiza en este trabajo, la cuestión de la independencia como un paso básico para que las entidades políticas accedan a la categoría de Estado, lo que sirve de fundamento para entender el papel del Estado independiente en el orden westfaliano. Al reconocer que hay cambios profundos en el sistema internacional, es necesario observar las variaciones en la concepción de independencia, sobre todo en relación con el principio de autodeterminación y el reconocimiento.Esto tiene mayor relevancia a partir de la década de 1990, por los procesos de desintegración de algunos países, en particular, el caso de Kosovo; otra experiencia relevante es Taiwán. A lo anterior, se suma el debilitamiento del Estado, con la aparición de variantes que cuestionan la estatidad y la existencia del actor estatal. Al final,se hace una breve referencia a la experiencia latinoamericana y centroamericana, que muestran particularidades desde el siglo XIX.

I examine three different ways in which the ideals of deliberative democracy have changed in the light of practical concerns about its viability. have changed in the light of practical concerns about its viability, i.e., making increasingly important the problem of how this ideal can approach societies characterized by deep disagreements, social problems of enormous complexity and inoperative instruments in their existing institutions. (1) Theories of deliberative democracy emphasize the process of deliberation rather than its ideal conditions and procedures. (2) Deliberative democrats are increasingly interested in the problems of institutionalization, in making voting, majority rule and representation more deliberative institutions. (3) Deliberativists examine the different scenarios and procedures of deliberation, pointing out obstacles that cannot always be anticipated by resorting only to conceptual arguments ; Examino tres maneras diferentes como los ideales de la democracia deliberativa han cambiado a la luz de las preocupaciones prácticas sobre su viabilidad, es decir, haciendo cada vez más importante el problema de cómo este ideal puede acercarse a sociedades caracterizadas por profundos desacuerdos, problemas sociales de enorme complejidad e instrumentos inoperantes en sus instituciones existentes. (1) Las teorías de la democracia deliberativa enfatizan el proceso de la deliberación y no sus condiciones y procedimientos ideales. (2) Los demócratas deliberativos se interesan cada vez más en los problemas de la institucionalización, en hacer del voto, la regla de mayorías y la representación, instituciones más deliberativas. (3) Los deliberativistas examinan los diferentes escenarios y procedimientos de la deliberación, señalando obstáculos que no siempre pueden anticiparse al recurrir únicamente a argumentos conceptuales

1-. International relations (IR) theory has suffered a restructuring among several lines over the past two decades. The gradual but uninterrupted decline of systemic theories - primus inter pares in the discipline since the 1970s- is one of those. (1) This decline was accompanied by a rise of those approaches that privilege domestic politics as the place to look for answers. For reasons I will develop below, such an intellectual step was logical, expected, and partially appropriate. (2) While the current state of affairs should not be seen as immutable and a systemic comeback is plausible, the truth is that domestic politics, and non-systemic approaches in general, are well entrenched in a semi-hegemonic position. In this essay I will explain the reasons behind the aforementioned shift, assess its consequences, and advance some hypotheses on the future of systemic theories of IR.2-. Born between the interwar period and the dawn the Cold War world, IR was created with the explicit objective of explaining the causes of war –particularly great wars, understood under the lenses of the two devastating conflicts of the first half of the 20th century. Since then, IR scholars have struggled to respond to the main challenges –or what they perceive as the main challenges- in world politics. (3) This "duty" to explain the world drives theory to follow the patterns of change in international politics, which, as they develop, suggest new problématiques and novel ways to approach them. In important ways then –although, as discussed later, this is not the whole picture- (4) a sociology of inquiry is needed to better understand some of the key transformations in IR theory -e.g. the shift from systemic to domestic theories. Systemic approaches (5) made their meteoric rise under the shelter of K. Waltz's Neorealism. (6) They were created as a tool for a particular time with particular problems. (7) This was a world in which the primary preoccupation was how to manage the bilateral relationship between the United States and the USSR so that it would not en up in World War III. There were certainly other interests in the discipline, but this one outweighed all the rest. A Cold War context made systemic theories very appropriate. Needless to say, the bipolar conflict had been in place a long time before Waltz's path-breaking Theory of International Politics. (8) The essential point is, however, that Neorealism proved to be very successful in explaining the basic patterns of interest in this particular period of the history of IR –i.e. dynamics of polarity, relevance of nuclear weapons, consequences of anarchy and its relationship with war and cooperation, inter alia- in a more parsimonious and convincing way than the discipline had ever been able to do.The IR community recognized this "Copernican turn", as Waltz defined it, as progress and systemic approaches were established as mainstream, maybe even as "normal science." Anyone trying to explain something in international politics had to reckon with the system. This was true for realists (see the work of Gilpin, Walt, and Grieco) but also for scholars with a line of inquiry that differed substantially from Waltz's (see Keohane's Cooperation after Hegemony for a good example). 3-. A dramatic event that shakes the bases of an academic discipline is sometimes needed to motivate scholars to devise new lines of inquiry and surpass research programs that appear to be losing heuristic power. This is what the fall of the Soviet Union did with Neorealism, and systemic approaches in general. (9) Structural realism was in many ways, and problematically so, a theory for the Cold War. Its discussion on nuclear weapons, bipolarity, uncertainty, and superpower dynamics seemed to be too tied to a specific historical context. (10) The inability of neorealism, or any other systemic theory for that matter, to foresee –or even explain- the disappearance of the bipolar world –a systemic change par excellence-supposed a hard blow to its appeal. (11) Both the fall of the USSR and the subsequent appearance (or uncovering, once the Cold War veil was lifted) of new "themes" in international politics -IPE, civil wars, the role of leaders, the democratic peace, inter alia- opened a fertile camp over which to argue for the need to "go beyond systemic theory." (12) I argued supra that this was an appropriate move (or partially appropriate). But the reasons implicitly inferred up to know -failure in predicting events and a crisis in the IR community (in a Kuhnian sense)- cannot support this claim. The other face of the coin is that the thorough self-examination of the 1990s also responded to internal problems of systemic theories as research programs. For example, in the 1980s the discipline was stuck in the mud of absolute vs. relative gains debate, a degenerative discussion from a Lakatosian perspective. (13) Visible problems of heuristic power were calling for a partial move beyond the system. This was the real cause for the shift, and the best argument to characterize it as "appropriate". The exogenous shock (fall of the USSR) had the role, not at all minor, of opening a window of opportunity for dissenting scholars. Helen Milner was one of the most eloquent advocates for this turn. Her argument, in short, was that "systemic theory simply cannot take us far enough" (Milner, 1992). The assumption that anarchy was the principal variable defining states preferences and the primacy of a straight causal line from the system to the state and then to policy-making was excessively simplistic, Milner argued. How could the discipline solve this quagmire? By studying domestic politics to understand states' preferences and, consequently, the differing patterns of conflict and cooperation in international politics. (14) As Milner contended: "…cooperation may be unattainable because of domestic intransigence, and not because of the international system." (15) A reaction against systemic theories was not exclusive to the liberal trenches. Following this turn toward domestic politics, some realist scholars directed their efforts at the incorporation of domestic variables as a way to add complexity to systemic models that they saw as too crude. In his From Wealth to Power, F. Zakaria argued that anarchy and the distribution of power were not enough to explain the behavior of rising powers. After observing that at the end of the 19th century the US was not as assertive as a structural approach would have predicted, he hypothesized that this was because it did not have the governmental capacity to do so. To solve this puzzle he argued for the incorporation of models of resource extraction and governmental capability to try to get through the Neorealist corset. This was an important intra-realist challenge to a somewhat ossified systemic realism. (16)The rise of domestic approaches represented a generalized discontentment with the excessive importance given to parsimony and the inflexibility that came with it. Parsimony, which should be no more than a tool in theory building, was placed as a goal in itself, restricting research in a way that went against the discipline's own progress. Those boundaries had to be overcome if we wanted to say something about some of the important issues left unstudied by a focus on the system. Once again, the Cold War world with its apparently clear strategic problems may have seemed more propitious to a highly parsimonious approach to theory building. In a post Cold War world, the costs of parsimony were too heavy. Domestic theories certainly lost in parsimony, but they gained in a more real approach to IR problématiques. This was the primary rationale behind the turn here discussed, and in this limited sense, the shift was appropriate. (17)4-. It would be nice to unambiguously assert that the fall of systemic theories made IR a coherent and progressive discipline. This, unfortunately, is not the case. The past two decades have seen the formation of a different ethos of theory building and discipline development that may end up doing more harm than good to our broader understanding of international politics. Something not mentioned up to now is the ascent of quantitative and strategic-choice approaches in the discipline. Quantitative approaches gained prominence by the same time that, and related to, domestic theories were supplanting systemic theories. (18) Strategic choice and game theory, following developments in other academic areas -especially economics-, also gained importance in the 1990s under the idea of formalizing theories and going beyond the "isms." There is nothing wrong with these approaches per se. Quantitative work has been very important in the empirical development of IR -maybe too neglected in the past. Formal theory, on the other hand, is a powerful and clear tool to build and evaluate theories while avoiding problems of underspecification all too common in the discipline –though, this is only true if one can get through its assumptions. (19)The problems of this new "methodological bets" are to be found in the costs for the general development of the discipline. The most pressing are the ones related to the idea that theory construction should be a bottom to top affair, and the implicit notion that by building the parts individually we will eventually end up in a progressive accumulation of theoretical knowledge. However, this epistemological decision may well result in the proliferation of particularistic theories of problems ever more sophisticatedly studied, increasingly particular and micro, and in crescendo uninteresting. (20) By depending on a kind of magical automatic accumulation of theoretical knowledge we are risking to end up with an even more chaotic and incoherent discipline (more on this in the conclusion). 5-. As said in the introduction, the fall of grace of systemic theories cannot be taken as an irreversible given; it is possible to devise some scenarios in which systemic approaches could make a comeback.The first one is linked to the relationship between theory and History discussed earlier. The post Cold War world, particularly the 1990s, was a strange period for the discipline. The study of IR has historically dealt with great power politics as its core. The "curious" 1990s came with a certain absence of great power politics, especially due to the overwhelming power position of the US. This goes a long way in explaining the growing emphasis on domestic politics, civil wars, international organizations, inter alia, during those years. A partial return of classical great power politics (or the perception of it) -for example under the banner of the rise of China and some other middle powers- might motivate a recasting of systemic theories -particularly for those wanting to study polarity (a passé topic in the unipolar 1990s), (21) systemic change and its consequences, etc. (22)Another plausible scenario would be the success of some of the ongoing projects to make systemic theories more sophisticated and comprehensive by, for example, incorporating domestic variables. A good example is "Neo-classical Realism" (see fn. 16). This research project proceeds from a systemic assumption of the influences of the system (that is, a neorealist basis) but incorporates domestic politics as an intervening variable between systemic pressures and decision-making. Though a rather interesting proto-school, Neoclassical Realism is still in its infant stages and has yet to produce work of remarkable characteristics. Lastly, domestic politics, as should have been expected, were not the panacea for the development of IR theory. There might well be a social exhaustion with the results of domestic and micro-theory –a Kuhnian crisis analogous to the one that discredited systemic theories. This may eventually take IR on unexpected paths. Nevertheless, if measured by academic output and Geist, predicting a comeback of systemic approaches seems a risky bet. The discipline appears to be quite comfortable with increasing its empirical production, formalizing theories towards an Icarian "scientism", and avoiding, at its own peril, a "wholist" view of international politics. 6-. Going beyond systemic theories –not in the sense of vanishing them, but of relaxing some of their strictures, increasing their sophistication, and trying new approaches- was the necessary thing to do for a methodology that was unable to cope with many of the relevant problems in IR. The turn to domestic and particularistic perspectives brought much needed renovation, indeed. However, the excesses incurred by systemic theorists as a result of an obsession with parsimony and structural effects may now seem analogous (although for the opposite reasons) to a fixation with the particular and micro-level studies in contemporary IR theory. A blind push to obtain ever more data of increasingly micro phenomena puts at risk what we can say about international relations in general. We may, for example, be more much prepared to sophisticatedly answer why a specific insurgent group responded in a specific way to the level of aggression of a specific state, (23) but we may also be losing our interest and capacity to think about the nature of conflict in its most elemental condition. The stakes are too high for the IR community to avoid an honest discussion on how far we are willing to continue on this path. (1) This essay works with the assumption of a relative decline of systemic apporaches. To argue that they have vanished would be utterly incorrect. For a convincing argument on the inevitability of structural constraints see Jervis'sSystem Effects.(2) Although a change may be welcomed, the results are not always as encouraging as expected (more on this qualification of "appropriate" later).(3) This does not mean, of course, that there is an exclusive focus on policy or immediacy, It means that in its most basic essence, the idea of the discipline is to be able to provide some answers to the pressing problems in the international system. To give an example, few people would be interested in studying the prospects of war between France and Germany in the 21st century per se –though it surely is studied as a historical case that can shed light on other issues-, while this was one of the main topics in the nascent IR discipline.(4) Social science does not progress only by exogenous shocks, but also for endogenous reasons that cannot be explained by what happens outside theoretical disscusions.(5) Understood simply as those that privilege the influence of the structure over the behavior of the units.(6) This type of theories certainly were not born with Waltz; systemic is a much broader category than Neorealism. The important point is that Waltz devised the more convincing type of systemic theory. For simplicity, Waltz' Neorelism will be used here as the epitome and a kind of proxy for systemic theory. (7) It must be said that the rise of systemic theories also responded to changes in the social sciences in general; for example, the influence of structuralist anthorpoligist Levi-Strauss' work, which Waltz knew well.(8) Theories of IR before Waltz hosted a diverse group of analysts: Classical realism from the hand of a Hans Morgenthau, Geroge Kennan and Raymond Aron; liberal approaches from a Stanley Hoffman, Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye; Bureacratic Organization and foreign policy from a Graham Allison; and a long et cetera.(9) See R. N. Lebow, "The Long Peace, the End of the Cold War and the Failure of Realism."(10) See I. Oren's Our Enemies and US: America´s Rivalries and the Making of Political Science.(11) As with its rise the decline of systemic theories was also linked to broader transformations in the world of ideas, to which IR seems to always be a latecomer. From a broad perspective, this phenomenon had started in the 1960s with the work of Foucault, Derrida, Geertz and others.(12) The end of the immediate preoccupation with bipolarity also gave the opportunity to rethink some long-term historical problems of Neorealism (see Schroeder 1994).(13) Some of the scholars engaged in this deabate were: Keohane, Grieco, Axelrod, and Mastanduno; cf. Milner (1992).(14) In another article in International Organization (1987) she argues that to understand the way in which states make decisions in the international economy it is not enough to look at anarchy. Her model studies the type of economic links between countries (high or low interdependence) and the influence of interests groups that may pressure the state to make particular decisions; these policy outcomes would have been incomprehensible from a systemic/anarchic stance. According to Milner, there is an important dynamic of preference construction and strategies adopted that are to be found in domestic politics.(15) See also Putnam (1988) for an interesting effort to move beyond lists of domestic factors and towards a coherent two level theory.(16) This line of research has been given the title of Neoclassical Realism (see G. Rose 1998). See the work of R. Schweller, J. Taliaferro, A. Friedberg, and T. Christensen.(17) Systemic theories were also attached to what has been discussed as the "paradigm wars" between realism, liberalism, constructivism, etc. The turn away from them can also be given credit for helping to discredit this unproductive way of theorizing.(18) This trend was tied to the notoriety of the "democratic peace" project that was, and still is, an empirical enterprise at its core. See Russett and Oneal (1999); cf. Gartzke (2007).(19) See Wagner, War and the State, and Lake and Powell Strategic Choice and International Relations.(20) This is not the nature of all the work in this approach, of course, but just a possible trend of the school as a whole. See Walt's "Rigor or Rigor Mortis" for a sharp, but not always convincing, critique.(21) For an exception see the work by N. Monteiro on unipolarity. This does not mean that polarity disappeared from the IR map, but it was certainly shrinked as a research question.(22) Some young scholars on this line of research are: P. MacDonald, J. Parent, D. Kliman and M. Beckley.(23) See Jason Lyall's "Does Indiscriminate Violence Incite Insurgent Attacks? Evidence from Chechnya" To be fair, Lyall's work attempts to generalize from this specific case –how convincing he is not very clear, however. *Ph.D. StudentDepartment of Political ScienceUniversity of Pennsylvania.E-mail: gcastro@sas.upenn.edu

El artículo tiene por objetivo dar cuenta de los diferentes enfoques que desde la disciplina de las Relaciones Internacionales permiten estudiar el fenómeno de las organizaciones internacionales. En este sentido, en primer lugar se realiza un abordaje conceptual y una caracterización de las organizaciones internacionales, así como una diferenciación del término Instituciones Internacionales. En segundo lugar, se señalan aquellos trabajos a los que se tuvo acceso que han estudiado el tema en los últimos años, evidenciándose que han existido esfuerzos desde diferentes puntos del planeta en indagar sobre este tema. En tercer lugar, se analiza el papel que juegan las organizaciones internacionales en la disciplina, específicamente desde los enfoques teóricos del realismo y neorrealismo, liberalismo, institucionalismo neoliberal e interdependencia compleja, constructivismo y otras contribuciones teóricas (entre ellas, la visión crítica, el funcionalismo, neo-funcionalismo, la teoría del agente-principal y la perspectiva feminista). Por último, se presentan reflexiones finales. Así, el artículo estudia un actor internacional considerado por los autores de carácter más estatocéntrico no tradicional en las Relaciones Internacionales, tal como son las organizaciones internacionales, que desde mediados del siglo XX han incrementado su presencia en el sistema internacional, vinculándose en la actualidad tanto con gobiernos nacionales como subnacionales y abarcando una amplia variedad de temas y problemáticas. ; The article has as main objective to evidence the different approaches from the International Relations discipline that permit to study the international organizations. In this sense, first the article defines and characterizes the international organizations, as well as a differentiation from the term international institutions. Second, those researches published in the last years related to the issue of this paper are being exposed in the discussion section given account of the efforts made around the globe to inquire into this subject. Third, the article analyses the role played by the international organizations in the IR discipline, specifically from theories such as, realism and neo-realism, liberalism, neoliberal institutionalism and complex interdependence, constructivism, and others theoretical contributions (like the critical theory, the functionalism and neo-functionalism, the principal and agent, and the feminist theory). Finally yet importantly, final reflections are being presented. Thus, the paper studies an international actor considered by the most state-centric authors as non-traditional in the IR, such as the international organizations, which from mid-20th century have increased its presence in the international system, with currently relations with national and sub-national governments and reaching a huge variety of issues.

Although empirical studies of deliberative democracy have proliferated in the past decade [90's], too few have addressed the questions that are most significant in the normative theories. At the same time, many theorists have tended too easily to dismiss the empirical findings. More recently, some theorists and empiricists have been paying more attention to each other's work. Nevertheless, neither is likely to produce the more comprehensive understanding of deliberative democracy we need unless both develop a clearer conception of the elements of deliberation, the conflicts among those elements, and the structural relationships in deliberative systems. ; Si bien en la década pasada [década de 1990] proliferaron los estudios empíricos sobre democracia deliberativa, pocos de ellos se ocuparon de las cuestiones más importantes de las teorías normativas. Al mismo tiempo, muchos teóricos de la democracia deliberativa desecharon rápidamente los hallazgos empíricos. Solo recientemente, algunos teóricos y empíricos han comenzado a prestar más atención al trabajo realizado por unos y otros. Sin embargo, no parece que esta atención baste para producir la comprensión que necesitamos de la democracia deliberativa; para ello hace falta que los teóricos y los investigadores empíricos desarrollen una mejor concepción de los elementos de la deliberación, los conflictos entre estos elementos y las relaciones estructurales de los sistemas deliberativos.

El artículo plantea en primer lugar un acercamiento a la problemática global de las migraciones a nivel mundial y su relevancia en la coyuntura actual, para poder centrarse en la segunda parte al caso de África. Debido a la complejidad de la cuestión, el trabajo se limita solamente al análisis de la migración laboral. El continente africano azotado por la pobreza, la sequía, las hambrunas y los conflictos políticos conoce una ola sin precedente de movimientos migratorios. En nuestro estudio analizamos en primer lugar el factor económico, como la Inversión Extranjera Directa, como un elemento central para detener el flujo migratorio. Sin embargo, la inestabilidad continental, no permite atraer las inversiones necesarias. La tendencia migratoria en África, como también en el caso de América latina, se ha incrementado drásticamente en la última década y podemos prever un incremento aún más fuerte en los próximos decenios. Los fenómenos socio-políticos ponen de manifiesto que el continente Africano presenta muchos cambios en los patrones que se habían estado viviendo por años. Por mencionar algunos, destacan transformaciones que van desde el cambio de destinos clásicos para la migración, hasta la nueva dinámica de inserción al mercado laboral de los países receptores. El VIH también marca nuevos patrones modificando el estilo de vida de la sociedad. Desgraciadamente la mayoría de ellas presenta un panorama negativo, por lo que se pone de realce que el continente tiene una infinidad de retos que afrontar en pro de un desarrollo que permita mejorar las condiciones de vida de sus habitantes. ; The article first proposes to analyse the global theme of world migrations and their relevance within the present world situation in order to focus in the second part on the African case. Due to the complexity of the question, the paper only deals with work migration. The African continent, hit by poverty, draughts, famine and political conflicts, presents an unprecedented migration. In our paper we seek to analyse first the economic factor, such ad Direct Foreign Investment, as a central element in order to stop migration flux. However, continental lack of stability does not make it possible to attract the necessary investments. The African migratory trend, as well as the Latin American case, has drastically increased over the last decade and we can foresee an even grater increase in the coming years. Socio-political phenomena show us that the African continent shows many changes in the patterns which had been commonplace in the previous years. Just to mention a few, there are transformations that range from the typical migration destinations to the new dynamics of labour market insertion in the receiving countries. HIV also shows new patters by modifying social lifestyles. Unfortunately, most of them present a negative pattern, and this is why it is highlighted that the continent faces a number of challenges in order to develop and improve its inhabitants standard of living. ; Instituto de Relaciones Internacionales

The Anthropocene as a new epoch brings into question the traditional modes of conceptualising International Relations. We believe that it does this by forcing students and practitioners of International Relations to think through how the discipline works as a set of ideas and practices, in fact, as a way of understanding the nature of problems and policymaking per se. As a discipline, International Relations is particularly sensitive to the questioning of the problematics of human exceptionalism, rationalist problem-solving and liberal modernist imaginaries of progress, which have shaped the agendas of international peace, development and democracy. Beyond the dark days of the Cold War, when International Relations was essentially a strategic exercise of Realpolitik, the discipline has staked a lot on the basis that Enlightenment liberalism is the universal panacea to human ills and that irrational structures or agencies can be civilised or tamed to further the interests of humanity, both in national or global regimes of good governance and the rule of law. These dreams of liberal universal solutions appear to have run aground in the Anthropocene as the last decade has marked a shift away from universal, modernist or 'linear' understandings of power and agency. In a world, construed as more complex, contingent and relational and replete with crises and unpredicted 'tipping points', traditional assumptions are up-ended and unintended consequences seem more relevant than 'good intentions'. Concomitantly, the methodological focus has switched away from understanding the essence of entities and towards privileging the analysis of relations, networks and contexts. Key to this has been debates focused around climate change and global warming which explicitly cast policy problems not as external threats to the 'good life' (that requires securing) but as instead questioning the starting assumptions of separations between inside/ outside, humanity/ nature, solutions/ problems and referents/ threats. This elicits a very ...

This paper analyzes import diversification in an aggregated perspective -- Using a dataset for 60 countries covering the period 1995-2010, we study the main determinants of import diversification -- We expect to contribute to the current literature, taking into account that there have been few empirical studies addressing import diversification and more specifically, at the cross-country level -- We take into account variables classified into four categories: Structural factors, macroeconomic factors, international trade factors and political factors -- We find robust evidence that total factor productivity (TFP), capital stock, real Exchange rates and terms of trade are key drivers of import diversification -- On the other hand, domestic consumption and trade openness exert an effect leading to import concentration -- We interpret this finding, taking into account the theoretical framework provided by the international trade and growth theories

Actualmente, las ciencias sociales y las humanidades están plagadas de diversos conceptos, locuciones, léxicos, modismos y eslóganes que pretenden reformular la manera en que los académicos reflexionan sobre lo "global" y su relación con lo "local" —ámbito que ha sido igualmente reconceptualizado—. La utilidad de estos conceptos y marcos no reside en su capacidad de representarlo todo para el conjunto de los académicos, sino en que permiten destacar las nuevas estructuras emergentes en la política global, realzar la manera en que dichas estructuras son creadas y en qué sentido son responsables de las nuevas redes de actores, así como subrayar el desarrollo de nuevos discursos y prácticas que rompen y engranan lo local y lo global. Este texto analiza la tendencia en la teoría de las Relaciones Internacionales a conjugar estado, autoridad y territorio. En la medida en que esta unión dificulta la comprensión de la complejidad de las relaciones y de los procesos globales, es necesario prestar atención a las contribuciones recientes que disocian dichos conceptos y que generan nuevas formas de comprender la organización y la práctica de la política global, y analizar especialmente el concepto de autoridad ; The social sciences and the humanities are presently littered with various concepts, phrases, vocabularies, idioms, and slogans that are intended to resituate how scholars think about the "global" and its relationship to a reconceptualized "local". The utility of these concepts and frameworks is to be found not in their ability to be all things to all scholars, but rather in their capacity to highlight newly emergent structures in global politics, how those structures are created by and are responsible for new networks of actors, and the development of new discourses and practices that collapse and telescope the local and the global. This text explores the tendency of International Relations to collapse state, authority and territory. As far as that bundling makes it more difficult to understand complex global relationships and processes, it is necessary to pay attention to the recent contributions that unbundle these concepts generating new insights into the organization and practice of global politics, and specially to analyze the authority concept.

El artículo presenta un análisis acerca de las relaciones internacionales norteamericanas. Los cambios producidos al final de la década de los años ochenta motivaron la discusión de nuevos enfoques teóricos. Como se verá en las siguientes páginas, son el realismo y el neorrealismo los que quedan en el centro del debate. Posteriormente, se presentan distintas perspectivas respecto a la redistribución del poder mundial y al rol que le tocará asumir en adelante a los Estados Unidos, evaluando su política exterior dentro de/nuevo contexto mundial. También se analizan aspectos como el nuevo rol de los organismos internacionales, el poder militar y el poder económico, y la democracia y los derechos humanos. ; This article looks at US foreign relations. The changes that occurred at the end of the 1980s brought new perspectives on theory into discussion, with realism and neorealism at the heart of the debate. The author goes on to dissect different outlooks on the redistribution of world power and the role that will fall to the US in the future, stemming from an analysis of its foreign policy in the new international environment. The author also turns his attention to the new role of international organizations, military and economic power, as well as democracy and human rights.

"Mad Money" (Manchester University Press, 1998) is the completely rewritten and updated version of "Casino Capitalism" (Blackwells, 1986). It has been suggested —of both volumes— that there was no theory underlying Strange's discussion of the international financial system in them. This she argues in this Working Paper is emphatically not the case, Both volumes always implicitly, and often explicitly, are underpinned by the dominant themes that are reflected in Strange's work since the publication of "International Relations and International Economics: A Case of Mutual Neglect", International Affairs, 46 (2) 1970. These themes are threefold: Firstly a need to privilege the politics of the international financial system in the study of international relations; a discipline too long myopic in its focus on violent conflict and war between states at the expense of all else. (ii) A need to go beyond liberal political and economic theory and recognise the significance of "structural power" in the international system. (iii) A need to recognise that "the areas of significant ignorance" in our understanding of the role of the international financial system in an era of technological revolution and globalisation are becoming greater rather than smaller. For Strange, the structural power of capital is not constant and, therefore, cannot be accommodated in the logic of liberal economics. Thus, using the dictionary definition of mad —erratic, unpredictable, irrational behaviour, damaging not only to sufferers but also to others— we have, as she puts it "mad money". ; Mad Money (Manchester University Press, 1998) es la versión completamente reescrita y actualizada de Casino Capitalism (Blackwells, 1986). Se ha sugerido —de ambos volúmenes— que no había en ellos una teoría subyacente en la discusión de Strange sobre el sistema financiero internacional. Esto, argumenta Strange en este working paper, no es en absoluto el caso. Los dos volúmenes se sustentan, siempre implícitamente y a veces explícitamente, en los temas dominantes del trabajo de Strange desde la publicación de "International Relations and International Economics: A Case of Mutual Neglect", International Affairs, 46, (2), 1970. Se trata de tres temas: primero, una necesidad de privilegiar las políticas del sistema financiero internacional en el estudio de las relaciones internacionales; una disciplina miope desde hace mucho, concentrada en el conflicto violento y en la guerra entre estados, a expensas de todo el resto. Segundo, una necesidad de ir más alla de la teoría política y económica liberal y de reconocer el significado del "poder estructural" en el sistema internacional. Tercero, una necesidad de reconocer que las "áreas de ignorancia significativa" dentro de nuestra comprensión del rol del sistema financiero internacional en una era de revolución tecnológica y globalización son cada vez mayores. Para Strange, el poder estructural del capital no es constante y, por ende, no puede acomodarse en la lógica de la economía liberal. Así, usando la definición de "loco" del diccionario —comportamiento errático, impredecible e irracional que daña no solo a quien lo sufre sino también a otros—, tenemos, como ella dice, un "dinero loco".

Desde sus inicios, la disciplina de las Relaciones Internacionales (RI) ha tenido la intensión ortodoxa de construir un método científico propio, muy parecido al de las ciencias exactas. Sin embargo, dicha pretensión se plantea como una de las posibles aproximaciones a la manera como se estudia el comportamiento de la sociedad en lo internacional y, por lo tanto, forma parte del debate epistemológico que reviste un interés renovado para las RI y la filosofía de la ciencia en el siglo XXI. En este contexto, la hermenéutica ofrece claves para la consideración científica de lo social, que orientan al pensamiento de las Relaciones Internacionales hacia un enfoque interpretativo. Como un aporte a esta exégesis, el presente documento plantea el valor de la hermenéutica, a partir de los postulados de Nietzsche y Vattimo, como método de interpretación de la realidad internacional. [Este artículo es producto del proyecto de investigación INV-EES-2346 "Colombia en el pensamiento de las Relaciones Internacionales contemporáneas. Historia social de las escuelas y su influencia en la sociedad nacional de cara a los procesos de la globalización", financiado por la Vicerrectoría de Investigaciones de la Universidad Militar Nueva Granada.]

Two approaches to the theory of international relations at present compete for our attention. The first of these I shall call the classical approach. By this I do not mean the study and criticism of the "classics" of international relations, the writings of Hobbes, Grotius, Kant, and other great thinkers of the past who have turned their attention to international affairs. Such study does indeed exemplify the classical approach, and it provides a method that is particularly fruitful and important. What I have in mind, however, is something much wider than this: the approach to theorizing that derives from philosophy, history, and law, and that is characterized above all by explicit reliance upon the exercise of judgment and by the assumptions that if we confine ourselves to strict standards of verification and proof there is very little of significance that can be said about international relations, that general propositions about this subject must therefore derive from a scientifically imperfect process of perception or intuition, and that these general propositions cannot be accorded anything more than the tentative and inconclusive status appropriate to their doubtful origin. The original version of this article was published as Bull, Hedley, "International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach" in World Politics, vol. 18, no. 3, 1966, pp. 361-377. Copyright Trustees of Princeton University. Published by Cambridge University Press. Reproduction permissions granted. ; En la actualidad, dos enfoques de la teoría internacional llaman nuestra atención. Al primero de estos lo denominaría el enfoque clásico. Con esto no hago referencia a la crítica y estudio de los "clásicos" de la Relaciones Internacionales, esto es, los escritos de Hobbes, Grocio, Kant y otros grandes pensadores del pasado que dirigieron su atención a los asuntos internacionales. Ciertamente, este estudio ejemplifica el enfoque clásico y provee un método particularmente fructífero e importante. Lo que tengo en mente, sin embargo, es algo mucho más amplio que esto. Se trataría de un enfoque que teorice desde la filosofía, la historia y el derecho, y que esté caracterizado sobre todo por una explícita dependencia en cuanto al ejercicio del juicio y por la asunción de que si nos limitamos a estrictos estándares de verificación y de prueba quedan muy pocas cuestiones relevantes que puedan ser dichas acerca de las Relaciones Internacionales. Se trataría también de que las proposiciones generales sobre esta materia deben por tanto provenir de un proceso de percepción o intuición científicamente imperfecto, y que estas proposiciones generales no pueden ser acordadas más que con una apropiada condición, tentativa e inconclusa, de su incierto origen. La versión original de este artículo fue publicada como Bull, Hedley, "International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach" en World Politics, vol. 18, no. 3, 1966, pp. 361-377. Copyright Trustees of Princeton University. Publicado por Cambridge University Press. Permisos de reproducción otorgados.