What can the absence of anarchism tell us about the history and purpose of International Relations?

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 1647-1669 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEX PRICHARD
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
State Theory ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Use Value ◽  
Subsequent Evolution ◽  
Traditional Use ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Hans Morgenthau

AbstractAnarchism does not feature in contemporary international relations (IR) as a discreet approach to world politics because until very recently it was antithetical to the traditional use-value of a discipline largely structured around the needs and intellectual demands of providing for the world's Foreign Offices and State Departments. This article tells part of the story of how this came to be so by revisiting the historiography of the discipline and an early debate between Harold Laski and Hans Morgenthau. What I will show here is that Morgenthau's Schmittian-informed theory of the nation state was diametrically opposed to Laski's Proudhon-informed pluralist state theory. Morgenthau's success and the triumph of Realism structured the subsequent evolution of the discipline. What was to characterise the early stages of this evolution was IR's professional and intellectual statism. The subsequent historiography of the discipline has also played a part in retrospectively keeping anarchism out. This article demonstrates how a return to this early debate and the historiography of the discipline opens up a little more room for anarchism in contemporary IR and suggests further avenues for research.

30. Nationalism, national self-determination, and international relations

2019 ◽  
pp. 481-497
Author(s):  
John Breuilly
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Different Types

This chapter examines the role of nationalism and national self-determination (NSD) in shaping the major institution of modern international relations: the nation-state. It considers different types of nationalism and how they vary from one another, whether the commonly accepted sequence of nation > nationalism > nation-state is actually the reverse of the normal historical sequence, and whether the principle of NSD is compatible with that of state sovereignty. The chapter also explores the contribution of nationalism to the globalization of world politics and the changing meanings of NSD since 1918. Four case studies of nationalism are presented: Kurdistan, Germany, India, and Yugoslavia. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether the principle of NSD threatens stable international relations.

27. Nationalism, national self-determination, and international relations

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Breuilly
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Different Types

This chapter examines the role of nationalism and national self-determination (NSD) in shaping the major institution of modern international relations: the nation-state. It considers different types of nationalism and how they vary from one another, whether the commonly accepted sequence of nation > nationalism > nation-state is actually the reverse of the normal historical sequence, and whether the principle of NSD is incompatible with that of state sovereignty. The chapter also explores the contribution of nationalism to the globalization of world politics and the changing meanings of NSD since 1918. Four case studies of nationalism are presented, in Kurdistan, Germany, India, and Yugoslavia. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether the principle of NSD threatens stable international relations.

scholarly journals A Constant State of War Or A Dog Eat Dog System?

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 66-79
Author(s):  
Nathan Andrews
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
State Power ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Realist Approach ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Constant State ◽  
State Behaviour ◽  
Hans Morgenthau

It has become far too fashionable to adopt a (neo)realist approach to world affairs, especially since this approach purports to deal with the ‘here and now’ of international politics. While this perspective can be seductive and even dominating, it is imbued with certain shortfalls that cannot be left unchallenged. (Neo)realism often presents a world that is anarchic, bound by state power and self-interest. Although these are “real” features of world politics, an exclusive concentration on these aspects alone does not present a comprehensive understanding of what states do and why they do what they do. This paper investigates realism, particularly the realism of Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Waltz, to ascertain the extent to which the assumptions these authors present explain the nature and scope of international relations. The contention is that (neo)realism’s perspective on world affairs is unprogressive, non-transformative, and deterministic of state behaviour, a feature that makes its analysis limited even in capturing the ‘here and now’.

scholarly journals State, power and global order

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Or Rosenboim
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Order ◽  
First Century ◽  
Spatial Thinking ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Modus Operandi ◽  
Hans Morgenthau

This article examines the evolution of international thought through the notion of ‘political space’. It focuses on two important domains of international politics, the nation-state and the global, to reflect on spatial categories in the discipline of International Relations (IR). Since its inception, the concept of the nation-state has dominated mainstream IR theory. Yet an investigation of how international order has been theorized over IR’s first century shows that this era has also been defined by globalist visions of political order. Nowadays, globalization is sometimes seen as the apex of the historical interplay of particularity and universality. The progression towards global political and economic order, however, is today undermined by the resurgence of state-centric political nationalism which seeks to challenge the legitimacy of the global political space. By examining how past international thinkers including Alfred Zimmern, Barbara Ward, Hans Morgenthau, E. H. Carr and John Herz, imagined and interpreted the relations of space and politics in the national and global spheres, this article suggests that spatial thinking offers an insightful approach for theorizing international relations. The article argues that the global and national spaces attain their political meanings through divisions as well as interactions and connections. The focus on divisions, exemplified in the writings of Barbara Ward, helps to make sense of the modus operandi of power in the national and global political spaces by investigating differences, tensions and instability.

Constructing Identity in “Glocal” Politics

1998 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 81-106
Author(s):  
M. A. Muqtedar Khan
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Socioeconomic Conditions ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Important Concept ◽  
Construction Of Identity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

This paper seeks to understand the impact of current global politicaland socioeconomic conditions on the construction of identity. I advancean argument based on a two-step logic. First, I challenge the characterizationof current socioeconomic conditions as one of globalization bymarshaling arguments and evidence that strongly suggest that along withglobalization, there are simultaneous processes of localization proliferatingin the world today. I contend that current conditions are indicative ofthings far exceeding the scope of globalization and that they can bedescribed more accurately as ccglocalization.~H’2a ving established thisclaim, I show how the processes of glocalization affect the constructionof Muslim identity.Why do I explore the relationship between glocalization and identityconstruction? Because it is significant. Those conversant with current theoreticaldebates within the discipline of international relations’ are awarethat identity has emerged as a significant explanatory construct in internationalrelations theory in the post-Cold War era.4 In this article, I discussthe emergence of identity as an important concept in world politics.The contemporary field of international relations is defined by threephilosophically distinct research programs? rationalists: constructivists,’and interpretivists.’ The moot issue is essentially a search for the mostimportant variable that can help explain or understand the behavior ofinternational actors and subsequently explain the nature of world politicsin order to minimize war and maximize peace.Rationalists contend that actors are basically rational actors who seekthe maximization of their interests, interests being understood primarilyin material terms and often calculated by utility functions maximizinggiven preferences? Interpretivists include postmodernists, critical theorists,and feminists, all of whom argue that basically the extant worldpolitical praxis or discourses “constitute” international agents and therebydetermine their actions, even as they reproduce world politics by ...

Hobbes among the Classic Jurists

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Boucher
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
Complete Identification ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Hedley Bull ◽  
Hans Morgenthau

The classic foundational status that Hobbes has been afforded by contemporary international relations theorists is largely the work of Hans Morgenthau, Martin Wight, and Hedley Bull. They were not unaware that they were to some extent creating a convenient fiction, an emblematic realist, a shorthand for all of the features encapsulated in the term. The detachment of international law from the law of nature by nineteenth-century positivists opened Hobbes up, even among international jurists, to be portrayed as almost exclusively a mechanistic theorist of absolute state sovereignty. If we are to endow him with a foundational place at all it is not because he was an uncompromising realist equating might with right, on the analogy of the state of nature, but instead to his complete identification of natural law with the law of nations. It was simply a matter of subject that distinguished them, the individual and the state.

scholarly journals Inadvertent reproduction of Eurocentrism in IR: The politics of critiquing Eurocentrism

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Juliette Tolay
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Vested Interest ◽  
Migration Policies ◽  
Policy Actors ◽  
Different Types

Abstract The study of Eurocentrism has become a hallmark of postcolonial International Relations theories. Of particular concern in this literature has been the resilience of Eurocentrism despite conscious efforts to move towards a post-Eurocentric understanding of world politics. This study argues that while existing works have highlighted many of the reasons why Eurocentrism persists today, it has not been sufficiently identified and conceptualised. In particular, why some policy actors, who have a vested interest in moving beyond Eurocentrism, inadvertently reproduce Eurocentrism? This article proposes to distinguish between different types of inadvertent reproductions. In particular it highlights rhetorical critique, deconstruction, decentring and dehierarchising, as different ways to critique, inadvertently reproduce and partially modify Eurocentrism. To illustrate this situation, this article looks at Turkey's migration policies and documents how Turkish governing elites have openly claimed the need to upend the Eurocentric order, yet have reproduced it in practice.

scholarly journals The hierarchical society: the politics of self-determination and the constitution of new states after 1919

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-396
Author(s):  
Maja Spanu
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Society ◽  
International System ◽  
World Politics ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
World War ◽  
New States ◽  
History Of

International Relations scholarship disconnects the history of the so-called expansion of international society from the presence of hierarchies within it. In contrast, this article argues that these developments may in fact be premised on hierarchical arrangements whereby new states are subject to international tutelage as the price of acceptance to international society. It shows that hierarchies within international society are deeply entrenched with the politics of self-determination as international society expands. I substantiate this argument with primary and secondary material on the Minority Treaty provisions imposed on the new states in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe admitted to the League of Nations after World War I. The implications of this claim for International Relations scholarship are twofold. First, my argument contributes to debates on the making of the international system of states by showing that the process of expansion of international society is premised on hierarchy, among and within states. Second, it speaks to the growing body of scholarship on hierarchy in world politics by historicising where hierarchies come from, examining how diverse hierarchies are nested and intersect, and revealing how different actors navigate these hierarchies.

Hans Morgenthau and the Tragedy of the Nation-State

2013 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 513-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Kostagiannis
Keyword(s):  
Nation State ◽  
Hans Morgenthau
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