Theories of War

Author(s):  
Laura Sjoberg

This chapter addresses how different theories of war from the discipline of international relations (IR) neglect a gender analysis and explores why gender analysis is key to understanding war. The chapter illustrates how a gender analysis accounts for a more nuanced and empirically accurate understanding of what war involves, what its causes are, who fights wars, and how to end war. Traditional IR theory focuses on international systems (system level war theory), the state (state-level war theory), and individual leaders, while feminist scholarship goes further and recognizes the interdependence of the personal and the political. Feminist scholars account for the ways in which traditional security mechanisms might paradoxically make the women in these states less secure. Furthermore, the chapter points out that little attention has been paid to gender dynamics and how men and women are differently socially situated, which is important to understanding conflict among political groups, states, and international organizations.

Author(s):  
Rodger A. Payne ◽  
Nayef H. Samhat

Power plays an important role in the formation of international organizations (IOs), including the formal institutions established by nation-states to promote collective action at the intergovernmental level. Power is commonly defined as the ability or authority to act, to accomplish a task or to create something new. Those who wield power are typically seen as having the ability to influence or even control the behavior of others. The willingness of states to employ material (or “hard”) power to accomplish their goals—whether those goals primarily reflect the interests of the strongest states or the shared preferences of many states—has long been the subject of scrutiny by international relations (IR) scholars. More recent scholarship approaches the topic from different perspectives, with particular attention to both the power generated by collective action and the collective identity created during the recognition and pursuit of common purposes. According to Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, there are four types of power: compulsory, institutional, structural, and productive. This typology can be linked to the way four major schools of IR theory view IOs: realism, neoliberalism, constructivism, and critical theory. Realist and neoliberal institutionalist schools use compulsory or institutional views of power to explain the development of regimes and their effects, while social constructivists and critical theorists rely on productive or structural power to tackle the meaning and importance of regimes. Scholars argue that regimes serve a cooperative function very similar to more formal IOs and provide a rationalist account of regime formation and behavior.


2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura J Shepherd

This essay draws on insights from feminist scholarship to complicate the image presented of International Relations theory in Justin Rosenberg’s article ‘International Relations in the Prison of Political Science’. I suggest that Rosenberg’s careful and persuasive analysis proceeds from a number of assumptions about where ‘IR theory’ resides intellectually, and in whose bodies ‘IR theory expertise’ accrues.


Author(s):  
Ali Hussein Kadhim Alesammi

Since 2010 Middle East have many events or what they call "Arab spring events" which it result of overthrow governments and the rise of new political groups, all of this elements was resulting of many international and regional activities and making new regional and international axles, as well as the intersections of the different regional interests, therefore this research will try to study the stability and instability in the region as an independent variable not according to the neorealism or neoliberalism theories, but according to the constructivism theory which it base their assumptions on:  "In the international relations the non-physical structures of international interactions are determined by the identities of the players, which in turn determine the interests that determine the behavior of international players." So the research questions are: 1-What is the identity policy and haw affect in international relations? 2-How the social construct affect in international relations? 3-How the elite's identities for the main actors in the Middle East affect in the regional axles?  


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (11) ◽  
pp. 106
Author(s):  
Saif Nasrat Tawfiq Al - Haramazi

There are many non-traditional additions to the influential works in the international or international context, which have expanded and become very large.  Some of them have not entered into this field of international relations. Hence the need to supplement, renew and add new concepts There digital (electronic) factor, has become the key to the hard and soft domination of international units, and an important input in international relations, especially the twenty-first century. We have been able to explore the reality of the international interaction based on (cooperation, competition, conflict). In conclusion, the global system will remain state-based and international organizations. At the same time, it will continue to be born and no states in its interactions with the ease of use of digital technology by individuals on the planet..


2021 ◽  
pp. 004711782110214
Author(s):  
King-Ho Leung

This article offers a reading of Plato in light of the recent debates concerning the unique ‘ontology’ of International Relations (IR) as an academic discipline. In particular, this article suggests that Plato’s metaphysical account of the integral connection between human individual, the domestic state and world order can offer IR an alternative outlook to the ‘political scientific’ schema of ‘levels of analysis’. This article argues that Plato’s metaphysical conception of world order can not only provide IR theory with a way to re-imagine the relation between the human, the state and world order. Moreover, Plato’s outlook can highlight or even call into question the post-metaphysical presuppositions of contemporary IR theory in its ‘borrowed ontology’ from modern social science, which can in turn facilitate IR’s re-interpretation of its own ‘ontology’ as well as its distinct contributions to the understanding of the various aspects of the social world and human life.


1993 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 351-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon J. Bulmer

ABSTRACTThe analysis of European integration has tended to use a toolkit drawn from international relations. But since the revival of integration in the mid-1980s, the governance of the European Community and European Union has increasingly come to resemble that of a multi-tiered state. Accordingly, this article analyzes the governance of the European Union from a comparative public policy perspective. Using new or historical institutionalism, three levels are considered. In the first part, attention is focused on the EU's institutions and the available instruments of governance. The second part examines the analysis of governance at the policy-specific or sub-system level, and puts forward an approach based on governance regimes. The final part considers the institutional roots of the persistent, regulatory character of governance in the European Union.


1995 ◽  
Vol 89 (3) ◽  
pp. 669-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Barkdull

Drawing on Emile Durkheim's Division of Labor in Society, I offer a typology of international systems. Previous uses of Durkheim to describe international systems suffer a number of conceptual errors and therefore are at variance with the spirit and intention of Durkheim's work. A deeper reading of Durkheim usefully draws attention to the moral basis for society and thus the problems with defining international systems solely in terms of power distributions. Further, rereading Durkheim offers a much richer typology than the simple distinction between mechanical and organized societies, affording in turn fresh insights into change in the international system. The abnormal forms of the division of labor offer the best description of the contemporary international system.


Author(s):  
Lisa Katharina Schmid ◽  
Alexander Reitzenstein ◽  
Nina Hall

Abstract Earmarked funding to international organizations (IO s) has increased significantly over the past two decades. International relations scholars have examined the causes of this trend, but know less about its effects on UN entities. This article identifies different types of earmarked funding, varying from low to high discretion delegated to IO s. Secondly, it examines trends in the UN Development Programme and UN Children’s Fund and finds that both have significant proportions of earmarked funding with low discretion. Drawing on thirty interviews, the article notes four implications of tightly earmarked financing: 1) higher transaction costs for IO s; 2) less predictable funding; 3) overhead costs that are rarely covered; and 4) increasing competition for financing. Overall, the article highlights that earmarked financing exists on a spectrum from tight to minimal control by donor states, and this has important implications for multilateralism.


2020 ◽  

The authors of the book analyze domestic political processes and international relations in the post-Soviet space. They examine the balance of political forces in Belarus after the presidential elections in August 2020, and transformations of political systems in Ukraine and Moldova. The main features of formation of the political institutions in the countries of South Caucasus and Central Asia and the latest trends in their devel-opment are analyzed. Attention is paid to the Karabakh and Donbass conflicts. The book examines the policy of major non-regional actors (USA, EU, China, Turkey) in the post-Soviet space. The results of develop-ment of the EAEU have been summed up. The role in the political processes in the post-Soviet space of a number of international organizations and associations (the CIS, the Union State of Russia and Belarus, the CSTO etc.) is revealed.


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