International Relations and Global Politics

Mainstream international relations (IR) has been built as an extension of imperial concerns. Thus, a restricted focus, even a self-styled demarcation was born: l ´etat cest moi. This organizational boundary-setting left behind a good deal of the way the discipline evolved in other areas of the world. In this sense, Latin America has been caught between North– South and Western–non-Western traditions, emerging with questions, problems, and challenges different from those of European and North American scholars. Throughout history, Latin-American IR studies have been marginalized from Western mainstream IR approaches, being a theory adopter but not a theory exporter. However, Latin-American IR is not new. We can trace its roots to the nineteenth century when the processes of nation-building arose as a result of the end of the European occupations. Since then, an idea of region started to develop and, with it, several shared approaches to IR emerged. This article aims to bring the Latin-American IR agenda on regionalism into light both in terms of issues and traditions, challenging the conventional wisdom about the sources of IR theory and proving evidence that Latin-American scholars and policymakers made notable contributions that flourished on the edges of the mainstream. By definition, the international relations (IR) discipline has been considered a Western social science and, even more specific, an American one (Hoffman 1991). This assumption marked not only who was going to dominate the field but also how and with which tools. A lot has been said on the lack of inclusiveness and nar-rowness of this approach, neglecting voices, experiences, knowledge, and perspectives outside the west. 1 IR theories and methods developed by western scholars have not been able to explain the realities of those in the periphery, leaving behind a good deal of the way IR evolved in other areas of the world. As a result, recent years witness a lot of reflexivity among critical IR scholars in an attempt to bring in a new agenda for research that could put other IR perspectives in the picture and discover different approaches from those imposed by the west. The

The end of the Cold War in 1991 marked a momentous shift in the global arena. For several decades after the end of the Second World War, Cold War politics had dominated the global arena and dictated the actions of many actors within it. With the Cold War appearing to be an endless conflict, realism emerged as the dominant theory in the field of international relations, as it explained the ongoing events better than any other school of thought could. However, the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the dissolution of the USSR led to a paradigm shift in international relations, as the events appeared to go against the main arguments in the theory of realism. Since then, there has been a debate regarding the place of realism in explaining the international system, as scholars question whether other theories such as liberalism now offer better explanations of the events in the global arena

Previous studies have noted the dominance of official sources within the news process and their unique ability to shape media narratives. This research addresses the role and implications of news sources in contributing to the overwhelmingly positive portrayal of the anti-Mubarak opposition protesters within British and American newspaper coverage of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Furthermore, this paper will assess how the position of global political elites towards the protests in Egypt possibly opened up the editorial space within the news coverage of the revolution for the anti-Mubarak opposition movement to emerge as the dominant voice within the reporting.

This paper deals with the background, role players, sequence of events, geopolitical considerations and history of the Angolan War which took place from 1975 to 1990 between the Soviet Union and its allies & proxies on the one hand, and the Republic of South Africa and its allies on the other. It also has a section presenting a rebuttal of previously published material on this subject, and a section on disinformation techniques used in and by the Soviet Union.

Scholars of International Relations (IR) increasingly realise that their discipline, including its theories and methods, often neglects voices and experiences outside of the West. But how do we address this problem and move the discipline forward? While some question whether 'Western' and 'non-Western' (or 'post-Western') are useful labels, there are also other perspectives, including those who believe in the adequacy of existing theories and approaches, those who argue for particular national 'schools' of IR, and those who dismiss recent efforts to broaden IR theory as 'mimicry' in terms of their epistemological underpinnings. After reviewing these debates, this article identifies some avenues for further research with a view to bringing out the global heritage of IR. These include, among other things, paying greater attention to the genealogy of international systems, the diversity of regionalisms and regional worlds, the integration of area studies with IR, people-centric approaches to IR, security and development, and the agency role of non-Western ideas and actors in building global order. I also argue for broadening the epistemology of IR theory with the help of non-Western philosophies such as Buddhism. While the study of IR remains dominated by Western perspectives and contributions, it is possible to build different and alternative theories which originate from non-Western contexts and experiences.

This article will attempt to 'provincialise' (Chakrabarty 2000) the 'secular cosmology' of International Relations (IR) through an examination of the relational cosmology of dharma. We argue that IR is grounded in 'secularised' Judaeo-Christian assumptions concerning time, relations between self and other, order and the sovereign state that set the epistemic limits of the discipline. These assumptions will be 'provincialised' through an engagement with dharma based on a reading of The Mahābharāta, one of the oldest recorded texts in the world. We argue that the concept of dharma offers a mode of understanding the multi-dimensionality of human existence without negating any of its varied, contradictory expressions. By de-constructing notions of self and other, dharma illustrates how all beings are related to one another in a moral, social and cosmic order premised on human agency, that flows from 'inside-out' rather than 'outside in' and that is governed by a heterogenous understanding of time. This order places limits on the state's exercise of power in a given territory by making the state responsible for creating social conditions that would enable all beings to realise their potential, thus qualifying the principle of state sovereignty which remains the foundation of the 'secular cosmology of IR'.

This article aims to address how to ensure a two-way ‘dialogue’ across ‘the West/non-West distinction’ in international studies. To this end, I first discuss three different approaches to dialogue, the Socratic, the Habermasian, and the Weberian, and clarify what kind of thing dialogue should be if it is to overcome the ‘West-non-West divide’ and transform the current ‘Western-centric’ IR into a global discipline. I argue that dialogue should be understood as reciprocal feedback from different perspectives for mutual learning. In order to achieve this goal (i.e. mutual learning), I call for an ‘instrumentalist’ approach to dialogue. To elucidate this point, I offer an empirical illustration. The focus here is on dialogue as mutual learning between Western-centric IR theory, more specifically constructivism, and the indigenous experience and knowledge of East Asia.

This review article explores how individuals are involved in global politics, and asks whether such involvement
can only be easily understood when mediated through nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) or whether there
are opportunities for recognising direct (global) political engagement differently. It investigates (albeit briefly)
whether the political agency of individuals is meaningful in global politics, and whether analyses that might
foreground such engagement can balance more structuralist approaches as well as those that seek to suggest that
only collective action (organised through NGOs) can be effective on the global political stage. One might
anecdotally see a role for individuals at crucial (global) political junctures, but the question is what opportunities
might there be for making a more strident argument for the role of the individual in global politics? In different
ways the five books explored in the review offer different paths to such recognition, and although none of the
books completely help resolve this lacuna, all offer ways to think about the shape that such a project might take
if it is to be successful.

This academic paper explores the 'mythologies' of Cold War history and 'demystifies' them by deconstructing the political personas of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. It likewise journeys through their speeches and political programs, depicting the steps that led to the collapse of the USSR.

International financial institutions play a central role in international relations, and in recent years, the so-called multilateral development banks (MDBs) have increased in number. The main aim of these banks it would seem is to try to respond to the needs that the traditional Bretton Woods institutions (such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) currently seem unable to manage those being a faster bureaucracy and greater freedom in granting funds. Among other things, the Bretton Woods institutions have received much criticism that has highlighted in particular their dependence on the moods of Western powers. In parallel, other institutions such as the New Development Bank (NDP), a bank created by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries in 2015, inaugurated a new path in global finance in line with the intentions of its founding countries, who wanted to give a new impetus to global financial governance. We believe that at this point, given that military clashes between superpowers seem increasingly unlikely to happen, soft power will play an important role in the future, giving rise to what we call a "clash of images". In this clash, financial institutions will play a decisive role. Moreover, in fact, the pandemic we are currently living through already offers a specific example of all this: by injecting funds more quickly, the NDB, for example, have aimed to give an image of greater efficiency when compared to Western organizations. In the future, therefore, the ability to give rapid and decisive answers to global issues could most likely represent a re al battleground, at the level of soft power, between economic powers and those financial institutions that report to them.

This paper’s central thesis asserts that the supranational institutional changes implemented in the European Union since the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in 2007 did not cause a ‘EU crisis of legitimacy’; but that to the contrary, it is the EU Member States’ growing strategic and performative legitimacy crisis both as Sovereign states and as Guardians of the EU Treaties that is the main driver  of demands for transformative change in the EU’s current institutional system of governance. To substantiate this thesis, this paper first investigates by means of a process tracing approach the historical double dialectics of the EU’s democratic deficit debates. It then examines the empirical evidence provided by FUEN’s MSPI drive to persuade the Commission to bring legislation protecting the rights of EU citizens belonging to autochthonous national minorities. Finally, it deploys Michael Zürn’s emerging paradigm of global politics to highlight the critical historical conjunctural bifurcation point the EU finds itself at present.

On 13th March 2013, surprisingly, a papal conclave elected Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, as the successor of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI who has resigned on the 28th February 2013, a rare event in papal succession. Interestingly, he is the first Jesuit Pope, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, the first pope from outside Europe since the Syrian Gregory III, who reigned in the 8th century, and the first pope who chose Francis as his papal name in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi, a patron saint for the poor in Catholicism. Since that day, various change has taken place within the Roman Catholic Church, one of the oldest religious institutions on the planet with more than one billion people, which means almost one-sixth of the world's population and half of all Christians in the world. The election of the Pope Francis seems to be a sign of change in the Roman Catholic Church globally. The Roman Catholic Church which has always been associated with the Western world, especially European and North American countries, is and will face the "Global South" phenomenon. Some recent studies have shown this real shift. This study will try to present how the "Global South" phenomenon occurs, how the Roman Catholic Church enters this new global reality, and how these things have an impact on the global political constellation and world peace by considering the role of the Roman Catholic Church in the global arena.

The overall theme for this collection concerns the question
about how changes in international structures at both the
global and regional levels have and will affect Middle East
international relations. One way to approach this question
is by engaging in a discussion about whether the Middle
East is in a transition from a post-Cold War ‘American
order’ to some kind of ‘post-American’ (dis)order, where
not only regional powers such as Iran and Saudi Arabia
but also non-Western great powers such as Russia and
China aspire for a larger role in regional politics. In the
following, a related yet somewhat different approach will
be adopted. I will focus less on international relations
than on the academic field of IR and discuss what these
changes ‘out there’ might mean for the study of Middle
East international relations ‘in here.’ In the following, I will
do this by (re)visiting two debates in the scholarship on
(Middle East) international relations.
see also https://pomeps.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/POMEPS_Studies_34_Web.pdf

Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan’s The Making of Global International Relations: Origins and Evolution of IR at its Centenary is a sophisticated survey of the history of modern international relations and the discipline of International Relations (IR) from the perspective of Global IR. The authors embark upon a project to embrace greater pluralism and overcome the Western hegemony in IR. The book covers the international and disciplinary histories from the nineteenth century to the present. Its overall argument is that the evolution of IR has mirrored that of modern international relations. Accordingly, the authors examine what they call versions 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 of Global International Society (GIS) and their consecutive parallels in IR in ten tight-knit chapters.

Scholars of International Relations (IR) increasingly realise that their discipline, including its theories and methods, often neglects voices and experiences outside of the West. But how do we address this problem and move the discipline forward? While some question whether 'Western' and 'non-Western' (or 'post-Western') are useful labels, there are also other perspectives, including those who believe in the adequacy of existing theories and approaches, those who argue for particular national 'schools' of IR, and those who dismiss recent efforts to broaden IR theory as 'mimicry' in terms of their epistemological underpinnings. After reviewing these debates, this article identifies some avenues for further research with a view to bringing out the global heritage of IR. These include, among other things, paying greater attention to the genealogy of international systems, the diversity of regionalisms and regional worlds, the integration of area studies with IR, people-centric approaches to IR, security and development, and the agency role of non-Western ideas and actors in building global order. I also argue for broadening the epistemology of IR theory with the help of non-Western philosophies such as Buddhism. While the study of IR remains dominated by Western perspectives and contributions, it is possible to build different and alternative theories which originate from non-Western contexts and experiences.

This paper throws light on the efforts of South Asian diaspora in the US in building peace between their home countries. Diasporas have always been considered as actors having an influence on the politics and economy of the hostland. However, this image of diasporas is getting blurred and what comes out as a clear picture is of the diasporas, who along with influencing host politics, affect policies at home as well. Not only do they affect policies, they also play a crucial role in conflicts back home. Therefore, the objective is to analyse the initiatives taken by Indian and Pakistani diasporas in pro-moting peace and reducing hostility in the region. Specific aims of the paper are:
 To examine the effect of political lobbying of diasporas on Indo-Pak relations.
 To understand the role of diasporas in inter-state conflicts and its resolution.
 To analyse the work and activities of diasporic peace building organisations
In order to accomplish the objectives, South Asian diaspora organisations, their activi-ties and effects of political lobbying have been analysed through interactions with re-source persons, content analysis of electronic news, analysis of their websites, news bulletins and discussion forums. Following organisations have been studied : USINPAC, PakPAC, GOPIO, NFIA, ACHA, INSAF, Erasing Borders, SAPAC, 1947 partition archives etc
The paper suggests that South Asian diaspora in the US is continuously engaged in promoting peace between the two belligerents through peaceful walks, campaigns, news bulletins, conferences, talks, workshops, student exchanges, discussion forums etc, which has yielded some degree of success. But, the fact remains that the process has not made a substantial impact perhaps because it is still in its nascent stage and re-quire persistent and enduring efforts.
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Arsala Nizami is a Ph.D research scholar at the School of Interdisciplinary and Trans-disciplinary studies (SOITS), IGNOU, New Delhi. She completed M.A in Conflict Analy-sis and Peacebuilding from Jamia Millia Islamia and B.A(prog) from Lady Sri Ram Col-lege, DU. Her Ph.D work is on Indo- Pak conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Her in-terest areas cover peace and conflict studies, diaspora, South Asian conflicts, gender studies etc. She has presented many national and international seminars on the afore-mentioned themes.

This article sets the scene for the Special Issue 'Reaching for allies?' by setting out the research questions and structure of the Special Issue. Specifically, this introduction reviews the state of the art of dialectics interweaving International Relations and Area Studies. Specifically, it focuses on tracing the genealogy of these debates, identifying the actors engaged with them, as well as, mapping those sites where such transdisciplinary knowledge is produced and circulated. We also provide an assessment of the interaction between the two disciplinary traditions as scholarly disciplines by reviewing the field as it had developed in the last decade since 2013. In order to do so, we present data on the brokers of this dialogue by analysing top-ranked Journals across regions, dedicated Special Issues on the matter as well as main international conferences and participants. Overall, this article provides a threefold contribution: first, we provide an account of the globalization of knowledge production and circulation that has also increasingly decentred, valuing local peculiarities and epistemological traditions beyond the Western academia(s). Second, we assess and discuss how Western and non-Western academics have contoured concepts which demand and entail site-intensive techniques of enquiry, exposure to complexities on the grounds, ethnographic sensitivity, and, at the same time, comparative endeavours going beyond area specialisms. Third, by looking at international and regional policy-making milieus with attention to context-specificity, we believe critical policy-relevant implications can be discussed, specifically in relation to local ownership and bottom-up approaches.

Finding common ground between theories that have never or seldom spoken is a necessary first step to bridge-building, particularly concerning their foundational bases. This article proposes to develop such a footing for a dialogue between the Marxist version of Latin American Dependency Theory (MDT) and Robert Cox's neo-Gramscian Critical Theory (NCT). The onto-methodological debate around the agency-structure relation offers a possible starting point for a discussion of (in)compatibilities, in particular by deciphering how each understands the relation; but also by asking whether they bring particular social ontologies that need to be addressed.

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This article will attempt to ‘provincialise’ (Chakrabarty, 2000) the ‘secular cosmology’ of International Relations (IR) through an examination of the relational cosmology of dharma. We argue that IR is grounded in ‘secularised’ Judaeo-Christian assumptions concerning time, relations between self and other, order, and the sovereign state that set the epistemic limits of the discipline. These assumptions will be ‘provincialised’ through an engagement with dharma based on a reading of The Mahābharāta, one of the oldest recorded texts in the world. We argue that the concept of dharma offers a mode of understanding the multidimensionality of human existence without negating any of its varied, contradictory expressions. By deconstructing notions of self and other, dharma illustrates how all beings are related to one another in a moral, social, and cosmic order premised on human agency, which flows from ‘inside-out’ rather than ‘outside-in’ and that is governed by a heterogenous understan...

All’inizio degli anni Novanta il politologo e saggista Edward Luttwak, nel suo volume The Endangered
American Dream, annunciava l’inizio di una nuova era, l’era geoeconomica, in cui gli Stati, liberi dalla minaccia armata, avrebbero potuto perseguire i loro interessi economici. Le minacce militari e le alleanze erano diventate, secondo Luttwak, meno importanti man mano
che il commercio internazionale diventava più pacifico, e questo in conseguenza — possiamo affermare oggi — di una costante liberalizzazione degli scambi commerciali e di una omogeneizzazione dei sistemi di produzione e distribuzione. Allo stesso tempo, però, l’autore metteva in guardia dall’eventualità che proprio il timore di controversie economiche avrebbe potuto creare nuove condizioni di conflitto in futuro. L’esistenza di una minaccia esterna, che per Luttwack sarebbe stata economica o, più precisamente, geoeconomica, avrebbe potuto compattare nuovamente i popoli e gli Stati (2). Una definizione di geoeconomia è stata data da Pascal Lorot nel 2000. La geoeconomia, asserisce l’autore, l’analisi delle strategie di ordine economico, in particolare commerciale, decise dagli Stati nel quadro
di politiche che mirano: a proteggere la loro economia nazionale o alcuni ambiti ben identificati di questa; ad acquisire il controllo di tecnologie chiave e/o a conquistare alcuni settori del mercato mondiale, relativi alla produzione o la distribuzione di un prodotto o di una gamma di prodotti sensibili, il cui possesso o il cui controllo conferisce al suo detentore, sia esso Stato o impresa nazionale, un elemento di potenza e d’irradiazione internazionale e contribuisce al rafforzamento economico e sociale (3). Secondo Lorot, la geoeconomia si interroga sul rapporto tra potere e spazio. Lo spazio in questione è uno spazio virtuale o fluidificato, nel senso che i suoi limiti si muovono costantemente; si tratta quindi di un’area libera da confini territoriali e da caratteristiche fisiche della geopolitica. All’interno di questo sistema geoeconomico si può muovere anche lo Stato, che una volta riuniti gli strumenti a sua disposizione, può agire a servizio della soddisfazione di tutti o di una parte degli obiettivi che si prefigge. Le strategie geoeconomiche sono spesso il risultato di Stati sviluppati ma, sottolinea Lorot, esse possono, se del caso, essere avviate da paesi industrializzati che non sono membri del club occidentale in senso classico. Nello spazio geoeconomico lo stato acquisisce nuove funzioni e missioni, volte a evitare perdite di sovranità a causa della globalizzazione e dell’intreccio politico-economico. A distanza di ventisette anni dalla sua prima formulazione, il concetto di geoeconomia ha assunto oggi, insieme a quello di geopolitica, tornato recentemente in uso (4), una grande rilevanza nel panorama delle relazioni internazionali. Qui di seguito si tratterà, seppur brevemente, dapprima l’evoluzione delle relazioni commerciali globali e poi l’emergere e consolidarsi delle potenze geoeconomiche, con una particolare attenzione al ruolo svolto dalla Germania. (…)

Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have become crucial players in the Middle East North Africa regional order. Few would have expected such a transformation even 20 years ago. This paper examines the constitution of Qatari and Emirati power. It demonstrates how understanding the entrepreneurial power of states is central to explanations of growth, strength, and position in regional and global orders. The analysis argues that the entrepreneurial powerhood of Qatar and the UAE is constituted by their development narrative and pursuit of status, which is facilitated by their material capabilities and their governance style characterized by flexible autocracy.

This article contributes to the Global International Relations project by critically evaluating the roles ascribed to Europe and the EU by Levitsky and Way in their model for explaining regime transitions. Focusing primarily on their international dimensions of linkage and leverage, it assesses both the normative geopolitical underpinnings and explanatory power of their thesis, drawing on the North African cases of Tunisia and Mauritania at the start of the Arab Spring to illustrate and substantiate its observations and arguments. It concludes that the EU’s failure to discipline either country’s competitive authoritarian regime raises important questions about the validity of the privileged role in which they cast Europe.