Conclusion: epistemic communities, world order, and the creation of a reflective research program

1992 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 367-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuel Adler ◽  
Peter M. Haas
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Research Program ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
World Order ◽  
Policy Coordination ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Epistemic Communities ◽  
Institutional Processes ◽  
Nation States

Studies in this issue show that the epistemic communities approach amounts to a progressive research program with which students of world politics can empirically study the role of reason and ideas in international relations. By focusing on epistemic communities, analysts may better understand how states come to recognize interests under conditions of uncertainty. According to this research program, international relations can be seen as an evolutionary process in which epistemic communities play meaningful roles as sources of policy innovation, channels by which these innovations diffuse internationally, and catalysts in the political and institutional processes leading to the selection of their shared goals. The influence of epistemic communities persists mainly through the institutions that they help create and inform with their preferred world vision. By elucidating the cause-and-effect understandings in the particular issue-area and familiarizing policymakers with the reasoning processes by which decisions are made elsewhere, epistemic communities contribute to the transparency of action and the development of common inferences and expectations and thereby contribute to policy coordination. International cooperation and, indeed, the development of new world orders based on common meanings and understandings may thus depend on the extent to which nation-states apply their power on behalf of practices that epistemic communities may have helped create, diffuse, and perpetuate.

Part VI Actors, Ch.40 Epistemic Communities

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haas Peter M
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Epistemic Community ◽  
Epistemic Communities ◽  
Causal Beliefs ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
History Of

This chapter begins with a definition and intellectual history of epistemic communities. ‘Epistemic communities’ is a concept developed by ‘soft’ constructivist scholars of international relations concerned with agency. Soft constructivists in general focus on the role of various types of norms, principled beliefs, causal beliefs, and discourses in establishing roles and rules in international relations: that is, determining the identities, interests, and practices that shape the identification of actors in international relations. The chapter then applies this definition to the study of international environmental law and discusses whether or not international lawyers constitute an epistemic community. It concludes with a discussion of some of the recent challenges to the influence of epistemic communities in world politics more broadly, and thus the future of international environmental law.

scholarly journals Desecularization of the World Community as Tension Source in the International Relations and World Politics

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 30-45
Author(s):  
I. V. SLEDZEVSKIY
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
World Order ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Religious Fundamentalism ◽  
Western World ◽  
Religious Revival ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
World Community ◽  
The World

Article is devoted to a role of world religions in the modern international relations and world politics. The phenomenon of world religious revival, his connection with globalization processes, formation of the multi-polar, polycivilization world is investigated. A research objective is the analysis of tendencies of a desecularization of the world community, the reasons and possible consequences of this process in global measurement. Article includes Introduction, three analytical sections and the Conclusion. In Introduction the phenomenon of world religious revival and approaches to his studying is presented. It is asked about a desecularization of the world community as a possible subject of the new direction of the international political researches – the international religious studies. The thesis about crisis of secular bases of modern political system of the world is proved in the first section. Revision of bases of a world order and standards of belonging to the world community from positions of the reviving religious fundamentalism, the cultural and political and social and economic bases of this process are considered. In the second section the role in a desecularization of the world community of political Islam (Islamism) is analyzed. It is noted that the greatest danger of politicization of Islam consists in emergence of difficult surmountable civilization break in the world community between the Western world (still confident in universality of the values) and the world of Islam. In the third section the possibilities of prevention of disintegration of the existing system of the international relations and collision of the cultural worlds are considered. The main attention is paid to processes of a global political institutionalization of such dialogue and its justification in the concept of global ethics – purposeful coordination and gradual connection of the basic moral and ethical values concluded in great religious and cultural traditions of the world. In the final section of article the conclusion is drawn that process of an institutionalization of civilization dialogue (civilization communication) it isn’t finished yet and didn’t become irreversible.

The Role of International Organization: Limits and Possibilities

1956 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
International Organization ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
World Community ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Foreign Policies

No field of study is more slippery than international relations. The student of government has a clear frame of reference: the state within which occur the developments which he examines. The student of international relations, unhappily, oscillates between the assumption of a world community which does not exist, except as an ideal, and the various units whose decisions and connections form the pattern of world politics—mainly, the nation-states. International organizations therefore tend to be considered either as the first institutions of a world in search of its constitution or as instruments of foreign policies. The scholar who follows the first approach usually blames, correctly enough, the nation-states for the failures of the organization; but he rarely indicates the means which could be used to bring the realities of world society into line with his ideal. The scholar who takes the second approach stresses, accurately enough, how limited the autonomy of international organizations has been and how little they have contributed to the achievement of their objectives; but because he does not discuss his fundamental assumption—the permanence of the nation-state's driving role in world politics—he reaches somewhat too easily the conclusion that the only prospect in international affairs is more of the same.

After Victory

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. John Ikenberry
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Politics ◽  
World Order ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Big Bang ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
The Cold War

The end of the Cold War was a “big bang” reminiscent of earlier moments after major wars, such as the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the end of the world wars in 1919 and 1945. But what do states that win wars do with their newfound power, and how do they use it to build order? This book examines postwar settlements in modern history, arguing that powerful countries do seek to build stable and cooperative relations, but the type of order that emerges hinges on their ability to make commitments and restrain power. The book explains that only with the spread of democracy in the twentieth century and the innovative use of international institutions—both linked to the emergence of the United States as a world power—has order been created that goes beyond balance of power politics to exhibit “constitutional” characteristics. Blending comparative politics with international relations, and history with theory, the book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the organization of world order, the role of institutions in world politics, and the lessons of past postwar settlements for today.

Another Geopolitics? International Relations and the Boundaries of World Order

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regan Burles
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
International System ◽  
World Order ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Ecological Change ◽  
Ecological Theories ◽  
Problems And Solutions ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract Geopolitics has become a key site for articulating the limits of existing theories of international relations and exploring possibilities for alternative political formations that respond to the challenges posed by massive ecological change and global patterns of violence and inequality. This essay addresses three recent books on geopolitics in the age of the Anthropocene: Simon Dalby's Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalization, Security, Sustainability (2020), Jairus Victor Grove's Savage Ecology: War and Geopolitics at the End of the World (2019), and Bruno Latour's Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climactic Regime (2018). The review outlines and compares how these authors pose contemporary geopolitics as a problem and offer political ecology as the ground for an alternative geopolitics. The essay considers these books in the context of critiques of world politics in international relations to shed light on both the contributions and the limits of political ecological theories of global politics. I argue that the books under review encounter problems and solutions posed in Kant's critical and political writings in relation to the concepts of epigenesis and teleology. These provoke questions about the ontological conceptions of order that enable claims to world political authority in the form of a global international system coextensive with the earth's surface.

scholarly journals ACTUAL DISCOURE ABOUT TIPES FND DEVELOPMENT TENDENCIES NATIONAL STATE

2013 ◽  
pp. 195-203
Author(s):  
E. G. Ponomareva
Keyword(s):  
Political Process ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Social Communities ◽  
Nation States ◽  
International Systems

The processes of globalization have determined significant changes in the prerogatives of nation states. In the twenty-first century the state no longer acts as a sole subject having a monopoly of integrating the interests of large social communities and representing them on the world stage. An ever increasing role in the global political process is played by transnational and supranational participants. However, despite the uncertainty and ambiguity of the ways of the development of the modern world, it can be argued that in the foreseeable future it is the states that will maintain the role of the main actors in world politics and bear the responsibility for global security and development. All this naturally makes urgent the issues related to the search for optimal models of nation state development. The article analyzes approaches to understanding patterns, problems and prospects of the development of this institution existing in modern political science. These include the concept of "dimensionality" based on the parameters of scale (the size of the territory) of the states and their functions in the international systems, as well as the "political order". In the latter case the paper analyzes four models: the nation-state, statenation, consociation, quasi-state. The author's position consists in the substantiation of the close dependence of the success of a model of the state on its inner nature, i.e. statehood. On the basis of the elaborated approach the author understands statehood as "the result of historical, economic, political and foreign policy activity of a particular society in order to create a relatively rigid political framework that provides spatial, institutional and functional unity, that is, the condition of the society’s own state, national political system." Thus statehood acts as a qualitative feature of the state.

The Study of Peaceful Change in World Politics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.V. Paul
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
Different Dimensions

This introductory chapter offers an overview of the core themes addressed in The Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Change in International Relations. It begins with a discussion of the neglect of peaceful change and the overemphasis on war as the source of change in the discipline of international relations. Definitions of peaceful change in their different dimensions, in particular the maximalist and minimalist varieties, are offered. Systemic, regional, and domestic level changes are explored. This is followed by a discussion of the study and understanding of peaceful change during the interwar, Cold War, and post–Cold War eras. The chapter offers a brief summary of different theoretical perspectives in IR—realism, liberalism, constructivism, and critical as well as eclectic approaches—and how they explore peaceful change, its key mechanisms, and its feasibility. The chapter considers the role of great powers and key regional states as agents of change. The economic, social, ideational, ecological, and technological sources of change are also briefly discussed.

A Research Agenda for the Study of Peaceful Change in World Politics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Welch Larson ◽  
T.V. Paul ◽  
Harold A. Trinkunas ◽  
Anders Wivel ◽  
Ralf Emmers
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
World Order ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Mechanisms Of Change ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Made In

This concluding chapter offers a summary and evaluation of the key ideas contained in the chapters of this Handbook. The chapter discusses peaceful change in terms of conceptual clarity; historical evolution of scholarship in the area, especially the interwar, Cold War, and post–Cold War era efforts at analyzing the concepts; and the policy innovations in this realm. This is followed by an evaluation of the key umbrella theories of international relations—realism, liberalism, and constructivism—and how they approach peaceful change. Some important sources and mechanisms of change are analyzed. This is followed by discussion of the policy contributions of selected great and rising powers toward peaceful change. The chapter then offers a summary of contributions and progress that various regions have made in the area of peaceful change. It concludes with some ideas for future research while highlighting the significance of the subject matter for international relations and the world order.

The New World Order

2019 ◽  
pp. 137-148
Author(s):  
Martin S. Flaherty
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
New World ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
New World Order ◽  
The Bahamas ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Nation States

This chapter looks to the real “New World Order.” Conventionally, international relations as well as international law concentrated on the interactions of nation-states. On this model, the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, Kenya, Mexico, and the Bahamas, for example, are principally the irreducible units. Recent thinking emphasizes that instead, international relations more and more consists of executive, legislative, and judicial officials directly reaching out to their foreign counterparts to share information, forge ongoing networks, coordinate cooperation, and construct new frameworks. The traditional nation-state has today become “disaggregated,” dealing with its peers less as monolithic sovereign states than through these more specialized “global networks.” Notably, the counterparts that officials of one state seek out in others tracks the divisions of separation of powers: executives to executives, judges to judges, legislators to legislators. How such transnational, interdepartmental networking affects each branch of government within a given state is another matter.

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