Grand Strategy Under Nonpolarity

2021 ◽  
pp. 689-705
Author(s):  
Randall L. Schweller
Keyword(s):  
Current System ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Power Bases ◽  
Process Variables ◽  
Digital Revolution ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Systemic Constraints ◽  
Private Actors ◽  
Power And Influence

The random and indeterminate nature of the current nonpolar world suggests a condition of increasing entropy. Relative capability advantages in today’s system do not translate as easily as they once did into power and influence over others. Unlike past multipolar and bipolar systems, the current system exerts only weak, if any, systemic constraints on actors. Thus, polarity has become a largely meaningless concept. Instead, we see an increase in the number and kinds of actors that can affect the system’s outcomes. In addition, complex process variables at the systemic and micro levels—especially those related to globalization and the digital revolution—are fundamentally reshaping the current and future dynamics of world politics. The key to grand strategy in this “hybrid world” of many types of actors wielding various kinds of power will be, first, for states to recognize the limits of traditional power bases and, second, to identify and cooperate with private actors that possess issue-specific resources, expertise, and influence with respect to the task at hand. That said, it is a complex and unpredictable world, not well-suited to the linear thinking associated with grand strategy.

Rethinking Private Authority

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica F. Green
Keyword(s):  
Green Building ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Multilateral Environmental Agreements ◽  
The Past ◽  
Delegation Of Authority ◽  
Private Authority ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Private Actors ◽  
Treaty Implementation

This book examines the role of nonstate actors in global environmental politics, arguing that a fuller understanding of their role requires a new way of conceptualizing private authority. It identifies two distinct forms of private authority—one in which states delegate authority to private actors, and another in which entrepreneurial actors generate their own rules, persuading others to adopt them. Drawing on a wealth of empirical evidence spanning a century of environmental rule making, the book shows how the delegation of authority to private actors has played a small but consistent role in multilateral environmental agreements over the past fifty years, largely in the area of treaty implementation. This contrasts with entrepreneurial authority, where most private environmental rules have been created in the past two decades. The book traces how this dynamic and fast-growing form of private authority is becoming increasingly common in areas ranging from organic food to green building practices to sustainable tourism. It persuasively argues that the configuration of state preferences and the existing institutional landscape are paramount to explaining why private authority emerges and assumes the form that it does. In-depth cases on climate change provide evidence for the book's arguments. The book demonstrates that authority in world politics is diffused across multiple levels and diverse actors, and it offers a more complete picture of how private actors are helping to shape our response to today's most pressing environmental problems.

scholarly journals From International Law and International Relations to Law and World Politics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Whytock
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Science Research ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Private International Law ◽  
Direct Role ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship ◽  
Private Actors

Political scientists—primarily in the discipline’s international relations subfield—have long studied international law. After considering how political scientists and legal scholars define international law, this article identifies five stages of political science research on international law, including the current interdisciplinary international law and international relations (IL/IR) stage, and it reviews three trends in political science research that constitute an emerging sixth stage of interdisciplinary scholarship: a law and world politics (L/WP) stage. First, moving beyond the “IL” in IL/IR scholarship, international relations scholars are increasingly studying domestic law and domestic courts—not only their foundational role in supporting international law and international courts but also their direct role in core areas of international relations, including international conflict and foreign policy. Second, moving beyond the “IR” in IL/IR scholarship, political scientists are adapting their research on international law to the broader world politics trend in political science by studying types of law—including extraterritoriality, conflict of laws, private international law, and the law of transnational commercial arbitration—that govern the transnational activity of private actors and can either support or hinder private global governance. Third, moving beyond the domestic-international divide, political scientists are increasingly rejecting “international law exceptionalism,” and beginning to take advantage of theoretical convergence across the domestic, comparative, and international politics subfields to develop a better general understanding law and politics.

CSDP Military Operations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich Krotz ◽  
Katerina Wright
Keyword(s):  
World Politics ◽  
First Century ◽  
European Politics ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Member States ◽  
Defence Policy ◽  
The World ◽  
The Eu ◽  
Common Security ◽  
Power And Influence

Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) operations, while still novel, are rapidly becoming a vital means through which Europe projects physical power and influence beyond its borders. This chapter analyses the EU’s multilateral, intergovernmental military operations, examining where and how the EU has pursued its emerging strategic interests around the globe. It first surveys the history and politics of the thirteen CSDP mweilitary operations launched since 2003. It then dissects the nature and diversity of military missions. While the EU has deployed, on average, some 3,000 military troops around the world each day, operations have varied widely in their mandate, the number of troops involved, the number of participating member states, and the symmetry with which states support and staff these missions. The analysis underscores that CSDP operations will remain an integral part of European politics and Europe’s search for its role and place in twenty-first-century world politics.

The Sales Manager's Bases of Social Power and Influence upon the Sales Force

1980 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 91-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Busch
Keyword(s):  
Social Power ◽  
Sales Force ◽  
Sales Manager ◽  
Power Relationship ◽  
Role Clarity ◽  
Power Bases ◽  
Propensity To Leave ◽  
Satisfaction With Supervision ◽  
Social Power Bases ◽  
Power And Influence

The relationships between the sales manager's social power bases and the salesperson's satisfaction with supervision, role clarity, and propensity to leave the organization are empirically analyzed. In addition, the influence of the salesperson's sex, age, and time on the job upon the sales manager-salesperson power relationship is explored.

Grand Strategy in 10 Words

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sven Biscop
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
European Union ◽  
21St Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Strategic Decisions ◽  
Key Terms

This book introduces ten key terms for analysing grand strategy and shows how the world's great powers - the United States, China, Russia and the European Union (EU) - shape their strategic decisions today and shows how the choices made will determine the course of world politics in the first half of the 21st century.

Social Choice and System Structure in World Politics

1988 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
James D. Morrow
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Social Choice ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Current System ◽  
Social Choice Theory ◽  
World System ◽  
World Politics ◽  
System Structure ◽  
The World

This paper analyzes the implications of social choice theory for the study of world politics. A view of the world system as a social choice mechanism leads to the observation that the outcomes of world politics are determined neither by structure nor by preferences alone, but rather by their interaction. Structural change occurs only when the actors cannot achieve their preferences through the current system. Three particular social choice mechanisms are analyzed to determine which conditions of Arrow's theorem they violate. The argument is illustrated by examining two salient theoretical works, Waltz's Theory of International Politics and Gilpin's War and Change in World Politics. The critique of Waltz illustrates that structure alone cannot determine outcome; the critique of Gilpin examines how structural change occurs in world politics and underlines the importance of preferences in such changes.

Design of Neural Network Controller Based on FPGA Distillation Column

2013 ◽  
Vol 385-386 ◽  
pp. 956-959
Author(s):  
Jin Biao Yang ◽  
Mo Yi Jia ◽  
Li Hu Su ◽  
Le Le Yao
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Dynamic Process ◽  
Distillation Column ◽  
Control Mechanism ◽  
Mathematics Model ◽  
Distillation Process ◽  
Process Variables ◽  
Neural Network Controller ◽  
Network Controller ◽  
Complex Process

A study based on FPGA controller, is used to solve the problems of control mechanism of this kind of dynamic process of coal chemical distillation process complex, process variables, controlled variables, it is difficult to establish mathematics model.

Grand strategy in a post-bipolar world: interpreting the final Soviet response

1992 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 355-375
Author(s):  
Raymond Taras ◽  
Marshal Zeringue
Keyword(s):  
International System ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
International Environment ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Grand Strategies ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Do So

All great powers have a grand strategy—including great powers on the verge of collapse. Each power develops its code of national security ends and means differently. Among the myriad factors which explain particular grand strategies, the most important consideration is the distribution of power capabilities in the international system. Regardless of each state's desire to operate independently—to be master of its own grand strategy—the structure of world politics offers little latitude to do so. As in the case of decision-making processes in organizations and bureaucracies, the international system imposes its own constraints and incentives on the security goals of individual states. Primarily addressing the international environment, however, systems theory ‘provides criteria for differentiating between stable and unstable political configurations.’ The first objective of this essay is to explore the role of structure as an indirect influence on the behaviour of its constituent actors, in this case, states. ‘The effects [of structure] are produced in two ways: through socialization of the actors and through competition among them.’

scholarly journals Researching Global Environmental Politics in the 21st Century

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Dauvergne ◽  
Jennifer Clapp
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Research Trends ◽  
Levels Of Analysis ◽  
Global Environmental Governance ◽  
Major Research ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Private Actors

This forum article highlights three major research trends we have observed in the journal Global Environmental Politics since 2000. First, research has increasingly focused on specific and formal mechanisms of global environmental governance, contributing to more elaborate and refined methodologies that span more scales and levels of analysis. Second, research increasingly has concentrated on the rise of market-based governance mechanisms and the influence of private actors, reflecting a broader shift among policymakers toward liberal approaches to governance. Third, over this time empirical research has shifted significantly toward analyzing issues through a lens of climate change, providing valuable insights into environmental change, but narrowing the journal’s empirical focus. These trends, which overlap in complex ways, arise partly from shifts in real-world politics, partly from broader shifts in the overall field of global environmental politics (GEP), and partly from the advancing capacity of GEP theories and methodologies to investigate the full complexity of local to global governance. This maturing of GEP scholarship does present challenges for the field, however, including the ability of field-defining journals such as Global Environmental Politics to engage a diversity of critical scholarly voices and to influence policy and activism.

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