Market Power, War, and Strategic Delay

2021 ◽  
pp. 44-78
Author(s):  
Stephen E. Gent ◽  
Mark J. C. Crescenzi
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Market Power ◽  
Commodity Markets ◽  
Competitive Environment ◽  
Price Setting ◽  
Market Structures ◽  
Institutional Rules ◽  
Aggressive Action ◽  
Political Leverage ◽  
Over Time

This chapter develops a theory to explain how market power competition can lead to violence and strategic delay in international relations. When states have opportunities to change market structures to provide their firms with price-setting abilities, a competitive environment can emerge. Given the economic rents and political leverage that can accompany the ability to set prices in hard commodity markets, states may be motivated to take aggressive action to expand their territorial reach. This market power motivation can sometimes lead to war. However, when states are economically interdependent, they may be constrained from turning to violence. This can open up an opportunity for institutional settlements. However, in some cases, institutional rules and procedures can preclude states from reaching a settlement in line with their market power goals. When this happens, states may turn to strategic delay and attempt to gradually accumulate market power over time through salami tactics.

Russia

2021 ◽  
pp. 125-169
Author(s):  
Stephen E. Gent ◽  
Mark J. C. Crescenzi
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Market Power ◽  
Price Setting ◽  
Gray Zone ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Gas Market ◽  
High Level ◽  
Political Leverage

This chapter examines how Russia’s pursuit of territorial expansion and gray zone tactics in Georgia and Ukraine can be seen as part of its overall strategy to preserve and expand its market power in the natural gas market. As the predominant gas supplier to many European countries, Russia’s state-owned gas company, Gazprom, has price-setting capabilities that the Russian state can exploit to extract rents and exert political leverage internationally. As part of its overall strategy to block potential competitors and secure its control over the transit of gas to European consumers, Russia has perpetuated territorial disputes with neighboring Georgia and Ukraine. Given its high level of economic interdependence with the European Union, Russia has largely refrained from escalating these disputes militarily and has instead relied upon strategic delay to achieve its market power goals.

Russia and Peaceful Change

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrej Krickovic
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Russian Foreign Policy ◽  
Unmet Expectations ◽  
Soviet Empire ◽  
Communist Movement ◽  
New Thinking ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Over Time

Over the last four decades, Russia has been at the very center of peaceful change in international relations. Gorbachev’s conciliatory New Thinking (NT) fundamentally transformed international relations, ending the Cold War struggle and dismantling the Soviet empire and world communist movement. Contemporary Russia is at the forefront of the transition away from American unipolarity and toward what is believed will be a more equitable and just multipolar order. Over time, Russia has moved away from the idealism that characterized Gorbachev’s NT and toward a more hard-nosed and confrontational approach toward peaceful change. The chapter traces this evolution with a particular emphasis on the role that Russia’s unmet expectations of reciprocity and elevated status have played in the process. If they are to be successful, future efforts at peaceful change will have to find ways to address these issues of reciprocity and status, especially under circumstances where there are power asymmetries between the side making concessions and the side receiving them. Nevertheless, despite its disappointments, Russia’s approach to change remains (largely) peaceful. Elements of NT, including its emphasis on interdependence, collective/mutual security, and faith in the possibility of positive transformation, continue to be present in modern Russian foreign policy thinking.

Conceptus interruptus: Forestalling sureties about violence and feminism

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Sisson Runyan
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
Critical Thought ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
Over Time

AbstractForestalling sureties about what constitutes violence and feminism and the relationships between violence and feminism have been significant themes in the work of feminist International Relations theorist Marysia Zalewski. I follow how Zalewski, through her work and work with others including myself, interrupts well-trodden ‘trails’ of violence and feminism to open up thinking about both. I consider how her provocative work on violence and particularly feminist violence prefigures and advances cutting-edge critical thought on violence as represented in the ‘Histories of Violence’ project. What I call her ‘palimpsestic’ or multilayered and intertextual approach to violence reveals it as not only destructive, but also productive in terms of breaking with deadening conventions. I also consider her conceptualisation of feminist violence as both epistemic and militant over time in relation to some contemporary feminist insurgencies, the kinds of insurgencies that serve as her muses for breaking out of forms of ‘secured’ feminism and opening space for unbounded feminist thought. Consistent with her insistence that theory (and writing) should provide uncomfortable openings, not comforting foreclosures, I end not with a conclusion about her work, but rather echo her call to resist the kind of ‘knowing’ that suffocates critical thinking and (re)generative feminist thought.

Recalibrating the governance of remedial clauses in contract law

2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-455
Author(s):  
Moshood Abdussalam
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Market Power ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
Market Structures ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Oligopolistic Market ◽  
Commercial Networks

Yawning gaps in bargaining powers between transacting parties have always been a source of concern in commercial relations and the legal governance of such relations. In modern times, the likely implications of gaps in bargaining powers are not only palpable as it concerns the affairs of transacting parties with weaker bargaining powers, but also on the welfare of society, at large. That is particularly so in this milieu of pervasive oligopolistic market structures, organised commercial networks, digitisation, and big data. The imperative to guard against the use of contractually agreed remedial clauses to consolidate market power and as tools for wealth extraction is the concern of this article. To this end, this article makes a case for a recalibration of the rule against penalties in contract law.

Rethinking Hierarchies in East Asian Historical IR

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 598-611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph MacKay
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
East Asia ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Dimensions Of Variation ◽  
Over Time

Abstract International relations (IR) has seen a proliferation of recent research on both international hierarchies as such and on historical IR in (often hierarchical) East Asia. This article takes stock of insights from East Asian hierarchies for the study of international hierarchy as such. I argue for and defend an explanatory approach emphasizing repertoires or toolkits of hierarchical super- and subordination. Historical hierarchies surrounding China took multiple dynastic forms. I emphasize two dimensions of variation. First, hierarchy-building occurs in dialogue between cores and peripheries. Variation in these relationships proliferated multiple arrangements for hierarchical influence and rule. Second, Sinocentric hierarchies varied widely over time, in ways that suggest learning. Successive Chinese dynasties both emulated the successes and avoided the pitfalls of the past, adapting their ideologies and strategies for rule to varying circumstances by recombining past political repertoires to build new ones. Taken together, these phenomena suggest new lines of inquiry for research on hierarchies in IR.

Pierre Bourdieu and International Relations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonin Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Golden Thread ◽  
Over Time

Over time, Pierre Bourdieu became an emergent reference in international relations—quite paradoxically, given that Bourdieu himself did not pay much attention to international relations as such. This chapter exhaustively reviews the works of Bourdieu in search of the international, both as a dimension of social capital and as a social space across societies. It then retraces how pioneering scholars used the theory and concepts of Bourdieu to develop their analysis of transnational processes. It also assesses the more recent blossoming of scholarship using Bourdieu in international relations, sometimes at the risk of inconsistency with the theory of Bourdieu. It finally suggests a coherent reconstruction of a theory of transnational fields based on Bourdieu for further research. Throughout the chapter, the notion of field serves as a golden thread to go back to its genealogy, to be found, surprisingly, in international relations.

India and the World

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Malone ◽  
C. Raja Mohan ◽  
Srinath Raghavan
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Asian Country ◽  
Extensive Survey ◽  
The Past ◽  
External Relations ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Affairs ◽  
Indian Foreign Policy ◽  
Over Time

India has emerged as a leading voice in global affairs in the past two decades. Its fast-growing domestic market largely explains the ardour with which Delhi is courted by powers great and small. India is also becoming increasingly important to global geostrategic calculations, being the only Asian country with the heft to counterbalance China over time. Nevertheless, India’s foreign policy has been relatively neglected in the existing literature. ThisHandbook, edited by three widely recognized students of the topic, provides an extensive survey of India’s external relations. The authors include leading Indian scholars and commentators of the field and several outstanding foreign scholars and practitioners. They address factors in Indian foreign policy flowing from both history and geography and also discuss key relationships, issues, and multilateral forums through which the country’s international relations are refracted.

scholarly journals CORRELATIONS BETWEEN THE EVOLUTION OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND PERFECTING THE INTERNATIONAL MEANS OF PROTECTING HUMAN RIGHTS

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Paraschiv
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Norms ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
Over Time

The evolution of relations between states made necessary the establishment, at aninternational level, of certain behavioural regulations and fundamental principles, whoseviolation may cause prejudices to the collaboration relationships developed among states.Thus, over time these were consecrated by customary rules, treaties or other internationalconventions, imperative norms of conduct, which are strictly imposed to all partners atinternational juridical relations1.Moreover, international norms which aim at respecting the fundamental human rightsand liberties were adopted, thus contributing to the defense of the universal values ofhumanity.

scholarly journals Market Concentration and Market Power / Koncentrisanost tržišta i tržišna moć

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 228
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Bogojević
Keyword(s):  
Adverse Effects ◽  
Market Power ◽  
Economic Efficiency ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Market Concentration ◽  
Relevant Market ◽  
Market Structures ◽  
Market Participants

Contemporary directions of the market liberalization should lead to a bigger number of market participants and to a bigger degree of competition among them. This again, leads to a more diversified offer and to bigger quality products along with higher level of services with cheaper rates. In order to control the mentioned processes, analysis of market concentration is needed, as well as studying and perfection of the methods that allow measurement of market concentration. The degree of market concentration which on a specific market one or more economic subjects have is defined as ‘’market power’’. Economic efficiency on a specific market largely depends on whether non competitive market structures which produce adverse effects on economic efficiency are existent on that market, which ultimately affects on the overall well – being. Conversance of the degree of concentration of a specific (relevant) market is important so that breaching of the market principles can be timely spotted and so that appropriate measures can be taken. Supervision over the market and the market processes, as well as appliance of specific measuring methods of market concentration have the goal of establishing and maintenance of free market competition in which all of the economic subjects participate under the same conditions.

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