German Politics, European Politics, and World Politics: “Everything That Is Not Impossible Is Possible”

Max Weber analyzed politics from the perspective of Chancen for actors, and he never separated world politics from domestic politics. The “Westphalian balance” between great European powers shaped Weber’s views on international polity. However, he also regarded Western individualism, human rights, and parliamentary democracy as necessary qualities to possess in order to be recognized as a great power. This vision provided the basis for his wartime critique of the expansionist tendencies in German foreign policy and for his demand for the parliamentarization of German politics. After the end of World War I, Weber used Woodrow Wilson’s idea of the League of Nations as the basis for a proposal on new treaty legislation on war guilt. By doing so, he also identified chances for introducing supranational elements to world politics. The final part of the chapter applies a Weberian political imagination to the interpretation of the United Nations and the European Union as supranational institutions.

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Race and World Politics: Germany in the Age of Imperialism, 1878–1914

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199237395.013.0016 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

Andrew Zimmerman

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

The United States ◽

World Politics ◽

European Politics ◽

International Division ◽

Central European ◽

Work Habits ◽

Kinship System ◽

Imperial Power ◽

Politics Of Race

This article analyses the question of race in world politics in the backdrop of imperialistic Germany. Racism and concepts of race emerged from an unequal, regionally varying, and international division of labor inside Europe and the United States and in those regions around the world over which Europe and the United States came to exercise formal and informal imperial power. Germany developed a unique Central-European politics of race in the contested Polish provinces of the Prussian East, and they annexed in the eighteenth-century partitions of Poland. Many Germans regarded Poles as deficient in Kultur, a concept signifying everything from diligent work habits to a secular rationality supposedly absent among Catholic Poles. Early German racism was thus cultural rather than biological and was promoted by the progressive bourgeois. As a principle of social ordering, race functioned as a colonial kinship system, and thus depended ultimately on the control of sexuality. A comparative analysis between international racism and German racism concludes this article.

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CSDP Military Operations

10.1093/oso/9780198790501.003.0051 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Ulrich Krotz ◽

Katerina Wright

Keyword(s):

World Politics ◽

First Century ◽

European Politics ◽

Military Operations ◽

Member States ◽

Defence Policy ◽

The World ◽

The Eu ◽

Common Security ◽

Power And Influence

Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) operations, while still novel, are rapidly becoming a vital means through which Europe projects physical power and influence beyond its borders. This chapter analyses the EU’s multilateral, intergovernmental military operations, examining where and how the EU has pursued its emerging strategic interests around the globe. It first surveys the history and politics of the thirteen CSDP mweilitary operations launched since 2003. It then dissects the nature and diversity of military missions. While the EU has deployed, on average, some 3,000 military troops around the world each day, operations have varied widely in their mandate, the number of troops involved, the number of participating member states, and the symmetry with which states support and staff these missions. The analysis underscores that CSDP operations will remain an integral part of European politics and Europe’s search for its role and place in twenty-first-century world politics.

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