Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisel Hintz
Keyword(s):  
International Economic ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Eu Membership ◽  
Inside Out

This chapter introduces the book’s aim of turning the concept of identity politics inside out. It presents Turkey as an empirical window onto these dynamics, familiarizing readers with puzzling shifts in domestic politics and foreign policy that do not correspond to shifts in geopolitical dynamics, international economic conditions, or the coming to power of a new party. For example, after the AKP made progress toward EU membership in its first term, the party’s subsequent terms witnessed a sharp reorientation of Turkey, a traditional Western ally, toward the Middle East. This period also demonstrates a rise in “Ottomania”—reviled until recently as delusions of imperial Islamic grandeur—which now permeates everything from pop culture to political campaigns. How was such a drastic reorientation of Turkey possible under the AKP? This introduction lays out how the book solves this puzzle by turning identity politics inside out and outlines the structure of the book.

Identity Politics Inside Out

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisel Hintz
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Process Tracing ◽  
Inside Out ◽  
Domestic Level

Teasing out the complex link between identity politics and foreign policy, this book turns the concept of identity politics as traditionally used in IR scholarship inside out. Rather than treating national identity as a cause or consequence of a state’s foreign policy, it rethinks foreign policy as an arena, alternative to domestic politics, in which contestation among competing proposals for national identity takes place. It argues that elites choose to take their contestation “outside” when their identity gambits are blocked at the domestic level by supporters of competing proposals, theorizing when and how internal identity politics becomes externalized. Turkey offers an ideal empirical window onto these dynamics because of dramatic challenges to understandings of Turkishness and because its identity is implicated in multiple international roles, such as NATO ally, EU candidate, and OIC member. Using intertextual analysis, the book extracts competing proposals for Turkey’s identity from a wide array of pop culture and social media sources, interviews, surveys, and archives. It then employs process tracing to demonstrate how elites sharing an Ottoman Islamist understanding of identity counterintuitively used an EU-oriented foreign policy to challenge the institutional grip of pro-Western, secular Republican Nationalism back home, thus clearing the way for an increased presence of Islam domestically and a renewed role in the Middle East. The framework developed closes the identity-foreign policy circle, analytically linking the “inside-out” spillover of national identity debates in foreign policy with changes in the contours of these debates produced by their contestation abroad.

Linking Identity Politics and Foreign Policy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisel Hintz
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Process Tracing ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
Change Over Time ◽  
Inside Out ◽  
Domestic Level ◽  
Over Time

This chapter provides clear definitions of the concepts the book uses and the theory of inside-out identity contestation it develops. The chapter defines competing identity proposals as suggested understandings of the national self that prescribe and proscribe specific behaviors and red lines as particularly intolerable points of contention among supporters of various proposals. It then argues that identity hegemony is the goal of these supporters, and contestation is the process by which the contours of identity debates change over time in supporters’ efforts to achieve hegemony. The chapter briefly reviews relevant literature to carve out space for the book’s theoretical argument: when supporters of a proposal are blocked at the domestic level, they take their fight “outside” through the use of international institutional conditionality, transnational activist networks, and/or diasporic politics. The chapter also discusses the methodology of intertextual analysis and process tracing employed in the study.

scholarly journals IR in the Middle East: foreign policy analysis in theoretical approaches

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
May Darwich ◽  
Juliet Kaarbo
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Middle East ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Foreign Policy Analysis ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Complementary Approach ◽  
Missed Opportunity

Research on international relations of the Middle East (IRME) has suffered from a schism between International Relations (IR) theory and regional particularities. To address this, scholars have offered corrective accounts by adding domestic factors to IR structural approaches. Studies on IRME thus reflect the turn to decision-making and domestic politics that has recently occurred. This article develops a critical analysis of the domestic politics orientation in IRME. We argue that this scholarship ignores work in foreign policy analysis (FPA) with its psychological-oriented and agent-based dimensions and that this constitutes a missed opportunity for the study of the region. The article offers suggestions for incorporating FPA research into IRME and argues that an FPA perspective offers an alternative and complementary approach to the eclectic frameworks predominant in the scholarship on IRME.

Russian Theory of International Relations

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrei P. Tsygankov ◽  
Pavel A. Tsygankov
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Russian Foreign Policy ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Political Factions ◽  
Fundamental Shift

Unique features of Russia’s perspectives on international politics as practice can be obtained quite clearly through the investigation of the debates on Russian foreign policy orientations. Russian foreign policy has been framed out of identity politics among different political factions under highly politicized conditions. Structural changes in international politics in the 1990s complicated internal reforms in Russia and the aggravation of socio-economic conditions due to the rapid reforms which intensified conflicts between conservatives and progressives in Russian domestic politics. Unfortunately, the aspirations of Russian reformist elites to make Russia strong could not reconcile with the conservative tendency the nation showed during the worsened economy in that period. This led to conflicting evaluations of Russian identity, which caused a fundamental shift in domestic sources for foreign policies. This transformed Russia’s perspectives on international politics, which brought about changes in its foreign policy orientation. Pro-Western Liberalism played a major role in defining Russian foreign policy under the A. Kozyrev doctrine, which defines Russia’s identity as one of the agents in the West-/US-centered system of liberal democracy and the market economy. Significant challenges to this pro-Western foreign policy came not only from outside, but also from internal changes that brought more fundamental changes to Russian foreign policy. This change should be understood within the cultural and institutional context of Russian society, since this framework determines the conceptualization of “national interest” and/or the formulation of diplomatic and security policies.

scholarly journals Democratization and Foreign Policy Reforms in Turkey: Europeanization of Turkish Politics?

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaprak Gürsoy
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Eu Membership ◽  
Divergence Of Opinion ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Eu

AbstractThe European Union membership process has had an impact on Turkish domestic politics and foreign policy. However, when compared with previous candidate countries to the EU, the Europeanization of politics in Turkey has not been an even process. The reformation of politics in Turkey has had three main characteristics. First, instead of the pace of the reforms being linear, there has been a periodic rise and fall of interest in introducing amendments. Second, the reforms have not necessarily replaced past practices, rather they have only introduced new ones in addition to the old ways of doing politics. Finally, there has been considerable opposition to the reforms in Turkey, partially because the government does not seem to follow the liberal-democratic trajectory set out by the EU membership process. The delays in enacting the constitutional and legal changes and the biased selection of laws and practices that are being amended do not give the impression that the government is sincere. Whether the amendments are in fact Europeanizing Turkey or pulling it away from its Western and secular political framework is a significant question leading to conflict among different factions in society. This divergence of opinion, in turn, results in further stalling the reforms.

The “Israel Lobby” and American Politics

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Lieberman
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Middle East ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Policy Agendas ◽  
Apparent Influence

In their recent book,The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argue that American support for Israel does not serve American interests. Nevertheless, they observe that American foreign policy regarding the Middle East, especially in recent years, has tilted strongly toward support for Israel, and they attribute this support to the influence of the “Israel lobby” in American domestic politics. Their book is principally an attempt to make a causal argument about American politics and policymaking. I examine three aspects of this argument—its causal logic, the use of evidence to support hypotheses, and the argument's connection with the state of knowledge about American politics—and conclude that the case for the Israel lobby as the primary cause of American support for Israel is at best a weak one, although it points to a number of interesting questions about the mechanisms of power in American politics. Mearsheimer and Walt's propositions about the direct influence of the Israel lobby on Congress and the executive branch are generally not supported by theory or evidence. Less conclusive and more suggestive, however, are their arguments about the lobby's apparent influence on the terms and boundaries of legitimate debate and discussion of Israel and the Middle East in American policymaking. These directions point to an alternative approach to investigating the apparent influence of the Israel lobby in American politics, focusing less on direct, overt power over policy outcomes and more on more subtle pathways of influence over policy agendas and the terms of policy discourse.

Obama's wavering: US foreign policy on the Egyptian crisis, 2011–13

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Fabbrini ◽  
Amr Yossef
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Experience ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Impact

The existing literature explains the wavering course of President Barack Obama's policy on the 2001–03 Egyptian crisis as attributed to either his personal characteristics (lack of an international experience, predisposition to sermonize rather than to strategize) or to the impact of the decline of the United States as a global superpower (inability to influence foreign actors and contexts). Although both explanations are worthy of consideration, this article seeks to demonstrate that they are insufficient when accounting for the uncertainties shown by the United States during the Egyptian crisis. Domestic factors, particularly the internally divided US political elite and a foreign policy team with different views, played a crucial intervening role in defining the features of US foreign policy. It was domestic politics that made the Obama administration ineffective in dealing with the new scenario that emerged in the Middle East and in Egypt in particular.

Migrant crisis to complicate Cameron's EU negotiation

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Election Result ◽  
Eu Membership ◽  
The Government

Significance As intended, the changes will temporarily ease the Conservative Party's internal atmosphere, most importantly before the October annual party conference. However, they are unlikely to alter the fundamentals of the referendum or its outcome. The more significant internal party battle will be over the terms of Prime Minister David Cameron's EU membership renegotiation. Impacts The government could still face a September 7 House of Commons defeat over 'purdah', despite its reversal on the issue. This would boost eurosceptic elements in the Labour Party before the September 12 leadership election result. Cameron's wish to discourage migration from the Middle East could intensify his foreign policy focus on the region.

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