Transnational Relations and World Politics: A Conclusion

1971 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 721-748 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph S. Nye ◽  
Robert O. Keohane
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
International Politics ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Secondary Importance ◽  
Transnational Relations ◽  
Domestic Interests

World politics is changing, but our conceptual paradigms have not kept pace. The classic state-centric paradigm assumes that states are the only significant actors in world politics and that they act as units. Diverse domestic interests have effects on international politics only through governmental foreign policy channels. Intersocietal interactions are relegated to a category of secondary importance–the “environment” of interstate politics. As Karl Kaiser has pointed out, the reality of international politics has never totally corresponded to this model. Nevertheless, the model was approximated in the eighteenth century when foreign policy decisions were taken by small groups of persons acting within an environment that was less obtrusive and complex than the present one.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Probabilistic Reasoning ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Bay Of Pigs

This chapter describes widespread skepticism regarding the value of assessing uncertainty in international politics. “Agnostics” argue that assessments of uncertainty in international politics are too unreliable to be useful for shaping major foreign policy decisions. “Rejectionists” argue that attempting to assess uncertainty in international politics can be counterproductive, surrounding foreign policy analyses with illusions of rigor or exposing foreign policy analysts to excessive criticism. “Cynics” claim that foreign policy analysts and decision makers have self-interested motives to avoid assessing uncertainty. The chapter explains how these ideas lead many scholars, practitioners, and pundits to avoid holding careful debates about the risks surrounding major foreign policy choices. The chapter describes how this aversion to probabilistic reasoning appears in several high-profile cases, such as President Kennedy’s decision to authorize the Bay of Pigs invasion and President Obama’s decision to raid Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

scholarly journals Images, emotions, and international politics: the death of Alan Kurdi

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Adler-Nissen ◽  
Katrine Emilie Andersen ◽  
Lene Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Open Door ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Syrian Refugee Crisis

AbstractHow are images, emotions, and international politics connected? This article develops a theoretical framework contributing to visuality and emotions research in International Relations. Correcting the understanding that images cause particular emotional responses, this article claims that emotionally laden responses to images should be seen as performed in foreign policy discourses. We theorise images as objects of interpretation and contestation, and emotions as socially constituted rather than as individual ‘inner states’. Emotional bundling – the coupling of different emotions in discourse – helps constitute political subjectivities that both politicise and depoliticise. Through emotional bundling political leaders express their experiences of feelings shared by all humans, and simultaneously articulate themselves in authoritative and gendered subject positions such as ‘the father’. We illustrate the value of our framework by analysing the photographs of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian-Kurdish boy who drowned in September 2015. ‘Kurdi’ became an instant global icon of the Syrian refugee crisis. World leaders expressed their personal grief and determination to act, but within a year, policies adopted with direct reference to Kurdi's tragic death changed from an open-door approach to attempts to stop refugees from arriving. A discursive-performative approach opens up new avenues for research on visuality, emotionality, and world politics.

Transnational Relations as a Threat to the Democratic Process

1971 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 706-720 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Transnational Relations ◽  
Fundamental Challenge ◽  
Democratic Control ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Industrial Societies

Transnational relations and other multional process seriously threaten democratic control of foreign policy, particularly in advanced industrial societies. The intermeshing of decisionmaking across national frontiers and the growing multinationalization of formerly domestic issues are inherently incompatible with the traditional framework of democratic control. The threat is all the more serious because it is sustained not by enemies of democracy but unknowingly by people who consider themselves to be acting within Western democratic traditions and because it results in part from the very forces of internationalism, interdependence, and economic advancement that have come to be regarded as indispensable. The consequences of these developments and the ongoing erosion of control over military and foreign policy, dramatically demonstrated by the debate on the Vietnam War, amount to a fundamental challenge to the democratic structure of Western societies. This essay analyzes the threat of transnational relations by reexamining the arguments for limited democratic control of foreign policy in light of recent structural changes in world politics and the consequences of transnational relations for the democratic process and its institutions. It concludes by indicating some approaches that could strengthen the democratic dimension which is being eroded.

9. Feminism

2019 ◽  
pp. 145-159
Author(s):  
Helen M. Kinsella
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Poststructural Feminist ◽  
Postcolonial Feminist ◽  
International League

This chapter examines international feminism, focusing on how feminist international relations theories are necessary for understanding international politics, what feminist international relations theories provide for understanding international politics, and how feminist international relations theories have influenced the practice of international politics. The chapter proceeds by explaining feminism and feminist international relations theory as well as feminist conceptions of gender and power. It also discusses four feminist international relations theories: liberal feminist international relations, critical feminist international relations, postcolonial feminist international relations, and poststructural feminist international relations. Two case studies of women's organizations are presented: the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom and the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether feminist foreign policy changes states' foreign policy decisions.

Transnational Relations and World Politics: An Introduction

1971 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph S. Nye ◽  
Robert O. Keohane
Keyword(s):  
International Politics ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Basic Unit ◽  
Transnational Relations ◽  
The Core ◽  
Unit Of Action

Students and practitioners of international politics have traditionally concentrated their attention on relationships between states. The state, regarded as an actor with purposes and power, is the basic unit of action; its main agents are the diplomat and soldier. The interplay of govern-mental policies yields the pattern of behavior that students of international politics attempt to understand and that practitioners attempt to adjust to or control. Since force, violence, and threats thereof are at the core of this interplay, the struggle for power, whether as end or necessary means, is the distinguishing mark of politics among nations. Most political scientists and many diplomats seem to accept this view of reality, and a state-centric view of world affairs prevails.

scholarly journals Practical Geopolitics in Cinematic Narratives of Marvel’s The Avengers Film Franchise

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-22
Author(s):  
Nikola Novak
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
International Politics ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Geographic Space ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Cinematic Narratives

This article implies that cinematic narratives project practical geopolitical discourses by using the example of Marvel Cinematic Universe’s success – The Avengers film franchise. The conceptualisation of imaginary threats in the films that follow the main storyline of the Avengers assembly, determined by the time and the geographic space, give those threats a symbolical manifestation that tends to overlap with the practical geopolitical notions of American foreign policy, as well as contemporary international politics. The interpretative textual analysis of the films’ narratives and their relations to world politics, hence, presents the central methodology of this article. The relation between those two has a capacity to transmit a subconscious message to blockbusters’ consumers about preferable practical geopolitical visions in contemporary world politics. Simply, the paper shows how cinematic narratives form an identity that is deeply securitised and able to capture the Zeitgeist of world’s politics.

Perception, causation and German foreign policy

1995 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Juricic
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Good Measure ◽  
German Foreign Policy ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right

With characteristic insight, intelligence, and good humour, the eighteenth-century Scottish poet, Robert Burns, once remarked that ‘the best-laid schemes o'mice an men gang aft agley’. Written primarily as a commonsense observation on success and unintentional failure experienced during life's travails, Burns’ witticism does ironically account for much in the world of politics as it functions both within societies and between nation-states. For in international politics, established patterns of action and reaction are often poor guides to resolving complex disputes, whereas innovative, original, and flexible policies, assisted by a good measure of paradox and luck, can sometimes settle the most intractable of problems. Not surprisingly, therefore, political pundits like to stress: ‘Be careful of asking the wrong question, because you may just get the right answer.’

Mr. Toynbee and World Politics: War and National Security

1956 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 374-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth W. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Security ◽  
International Society ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern War

IHE problem of war and national security, at one time conceived of as the province of almost anyone but the peace-minded international relationist, has come increasingly to occupy scholars and researchers. Arnold J. Toynbee, whose major concern is the philosophy of history, preserves a lively interest in international politics and particularly in the problem of war, the principles of foreign policy, and the quest for an applicable body of theory concerning international society. With the publication of the last four volumes of his famed A Study of History, it may be appropriate to call attention to the other side of his work, especially as he brings to the discussion a clarity, simplicity, and concreteness refreshing by contrast with the pompous tautologies of much of modern scholarship. This article reviews Mr. Toynbee's contribution to knowledge on the first of the problems mentioned, namely, war and national security. It seeks to present his conception of the crisis in modern war, social factors underlying the transformation of warfare, and prevailing theories on the nature and inevitability of war.

Operational Code Theory: Beliefs and Foreign Policy Decisions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen G. Walker ◽  
Mark Schafer
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Strategic Interaction ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Code Theory ◽  
Code Analysis ◽  
Operational Code

The process of foreign policy decision making is influenced in large part by beliefs, along with the strategic interaction between actors engendered by their decisions and the resulting political outcomes. In this context, beliefs encompass three kinds of effects: the mirroring effects associated with the decision making situation, the steering effects that arise from this situation, and the learning effects of feedback. These effects are modeled using operational code analysis, although “operational code theory” more accurately describes an alliance of attribution and schema theories from psychology and game theory from economics applied to the domain of politics. This “theory complex” specifies belief-based solutions to the puzzles posed by diagnostic, decision making, and learning processes in world politics. The major social and intellectual dimensions of operational code theory can be traced to Nathan Leites’s seminal research on the Bolshevik operational code, The Operational Code of the Politburo. In the last half of the twentieth century, applications of operational code analysis have emphasized different cognitive, emotional, and motivational mechanisms as intellectual dimensions in explaining foreign policy decisions. The literature on operational code theory may be divided into four general waves of research: idiographic-interpretive studies, nomothetic-typological studies, quantitative-statistical studies, and formal modeling studies. The present trajectory of studies on operational code points to a number of important trends that straddle political psychology and game theory. For example, the psychological processes of mirroring, steering, and learning associated with operational code analysis have the potential to enrich our understanding of game-theoretic models of strategic interaction.

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