Oil and Security: The Necessity of Political Economy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff D Colgan
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Energy Consumption ◽  
International Conflict ◽  
Explanatory Variable ◽  
Resource Curse ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
Related Variable ◽  
Oil Politics

Abstract Many international conflicts are in some way related to energy, ever since oil became the world's preeminent strategic commodity in the early 20th century. I argue that the most important energy-related variable for international conflict is a state's net oil import position. Oil politics tends to appear in one of three ways in security studies. Some have emphasized resource wars; others have focused on the needs of oil importers; and still others on the pathologies of oil exporters. These disparate approaches, largely isolated from each other, can better be understood as relating to a single explanatory variable. Lots of other variables matter but none are as central as net oil imports. This means that to understand energy and security, a political economy framework is a necessity. For oil exporters, external petro-aggression and internal pathologies of the resource curse are the key mechanisms. For oil importers, energy consumption needs generate a plethora of mechanisms that complicate conflict dynamics. A sophisticated understanding of these mechanisms can improve our understanding of both national and global security.

From the Colonial to Feminist IR: Feminist IR Studies, the Wider FSS/GPE Research Agenda, and the Questions of Value, Valuation, Security, and Violence

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 739-746 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. Agathangelou
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Ir Studies ◽  
The World ◽  
Forms Of Violence

International relations (IR) feminists have significantly impacted the way we analyze the world and power. However, as Cynthia Enloe points out, “there are now signs—worrisome signs—that feminist analysts of international politics might be forgetting what they have shared” and are “making bricks to construct new intellectual barriers. That is not progress” (2015, 436). I agree. The project/process that has led to the separation/specialization of feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist global political economy (FGPE) does not constitute progress but instead ends up embodying forms of violence that erase the materialist bases of our intellectual labor's divisions (Agathangelou 1997), the historical and social constitution of our formations as intellectuals and subjects. This amnesiac approach evades our personal lives and colludes with those forces that allow for the violence that comes with abstraction. These “worrisome signs” should be explained if we are to move FSS and FGPE beyond a “merger” (Allison 2015) that speaks only to some issues and some humans in the global theater.

Feminist Global Political Economy and Feminist Security Studies? The Politics of Delineating Subfields

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 727-733 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Stern
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Feminist Research ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Critical Perspectives

When considering possible conversations, synergies, overlaps, similarities, conflicts, and distinctions between two subfields or “camps” (Sylvester 2010), the question of limits looms large. Where, why, and how are the limits of feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist global political economy (FGPE) currently being drawn, and to what effect? Building upon previous conversations about the relationship between FSS and FGPE, particularly as they were discussed in the Critical Perspectives section in Politics & Gender (June 2015), as well as those about FSS and FGPE more generally, I briefly touch on a few central points regarding the politics of boundary drawing and the practices of feminist research.

Revisionist Conflict and State Repression

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-72
Author(s):  
Thorin M. Wright
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Conflict ◽  
Black Box ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Political Status ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
At Home

What kinds of international conflicts make states more likely to increase repression? I argue that the issues at stake in conflict may have different levels of domestic salience and may alter the domestic political status quo, thus increasing or decreasing a state’s or regime’s propensity to repress. I argue and find that democracies are most likely to increase repression when they are territorial revisionists, specifically increasing the use of imprisonment and torture. Autocratic states are more likely to increase repression during foreign policy-oriented disputes, as opposed to those fought over territory, which are less likely to escalate to full-scale war, and more likely to be domestically motivated. This project thus opens up the black box of international conflict to better understand how the reasons states fight abroad affects decisions to repress at home.

scholarly journals Rebuilding Bridges: Toward a Feminist Research Agenda for Postwar Reconstruction

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 715-721 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Bergeron ◽  
Carol Cohn ◽  
Claire Duncanson
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Postwar Reconstruction ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Political Economic

As feminists who think about war and peacebuilding, we cannot help but encounter the complex, entwined political economic processes that underlie wars’ causes, their courses, and the challenges of postwar reconstruction. For us, then, the increasing academic division between feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist (international) political economy (FPE/FIPE) has been a cause for concern, and we welcomed Politics & Gender’s earlier Critical Perspectives section on efforts to bridge the two (June 2015). We noticed, however, that although violence was addressed in several of the special section's articles, war made only brief and somewhat peripheral appearances, and peacebuilding was all but absent. While three contributions (Hudson 2015; Sjoberg 2015; True 2015) mentioned the importance of political economy in the analysis of armed conflict, the aspects of war on which the articles focused were militarized sexualities (Sjoberg 2015) or conflict-related and postwar sexual and gender-based violence (Hudson 2015; True 2015).

It's the rents, stupid! The political economy of the resource curse

Energy Policy ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (12) ◽  
pp. 5317-5325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivar Kolstad ◽  
Arne Wiig
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Resource Curse ◽  
The Political
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