How China Sees the World: Han-Centrism and the Balance of Power in International Politics. By John M. Friend and Bradley A. Thayer. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2018. Pp. xii, 179. $27.95.)

Historian ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. 724-725
Author(s):  
Robert Sutter
Keyword(s):  
International Politics ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The World

Variation, change, and transitions in international politics

2001 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 281-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Jervis
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World

Policymakers and scholars have to deal with the difficult problems of variation, change, and transitions in world politics. Practitioners have to estimate the capabilities and intentions of those with whom they are interacting and need to determine the kind and extent of variety in their environments. Detecting, diagnosing, and dealing with change also is particular difficult. Scholars have shown the wide range of units and systems that human beings have created, but need to also examine the extent to which they are characterized by common processes and dynamics. The balance of power generally operates through unintended consequences and can characterize systems even when no one seeks balance. Change may be more common than scholars often appreciate. Nuclear weapons undermine much traditional international politics and even greater changes will flow from the fact that the leading powers in the world no longer contemplate war with each other.

New walls to keep the bad out: populism and the totalitarian psyche

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-130
Author(s):  
Coline Covington
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Group Solidarity ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Psychological Understanding ◽  
Psychic Development ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cold War

The Berlin Wall came down on 9 November 1989 and marked the end of the Cold War. As old antagonisms thawed a new landscape emerged of unification and tolerance. Censorship was no longer the principal means of ensuring group solidarity. The crumbling bricks brought not only freedom of movement but freedom of thought. Now, nearly thirty years later, globalisation has created a new balance of power, disrupting borders and economies across the world. The groups that thought they were in power no longer have much of a say and are anxious about their future. As protest grows, we are beginning to see that the old antagonisms have not disappeared but are, in fact, resurfacing. This article will start by looking at the dissembling of a marriage in which the wall that had peacefully maintained coexistence disintegrates and leads to a psychic development that uncannily mirrors that of populism today. The individual vignette leads to a broader psychological understanding of the totalitarian dynamic that underlies populism and threatens once again to imprison us within its walls.

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.

Harold D. Lasswell's Political World: Weak Tea for Hard Times

1981 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard M. Merelman
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Science Courses ◽  
Political World ◽  
Terra Incognita ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Hard Times ◽  
The Law ◽  
The 1950S

I first encountered the work of Harold Lasswell in the late 1950s, when I was a barely awake undergraduate at a university whose reputation for mediocrity was richly deserved. I opened Politics: Who Gets What, When, How to the first paragraph: ‘The study of politics is the study of influence and the influential. The science of politics states conditions; the philosophy of politics justifies preferences. This book, restricted to political analysis, declares no preferences. It states conditions.’ I had never heard of Lasswell, for my political science courses limited themselves to subjects like Congressional seniority and Cabinet responsibility in Britain. One course discussed the law of piracy, a subject I had trouble linking to international politics in the 1950s. Some enterprising instructors occasionally discussed the balance of power, and one even assigned David Truman. But Lasswell was terra incognita to me, as he no doubt was to most undergraduates in those years.

Has Europe Solved the Problem of War? Explaining the ‘Long Peace’ of the Post-1945 Era

2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-377
Author(s):  
David Michael Green
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Integration ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Integration Process ◽  
60Th Anniversary ◽  
Causal Factors ◽  
Empirical Question ◽  
Successful Experiment ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

May 9, 2010, marks the 60th anniversary of what is arguably the boldest and ostensibly the most successful experiment in the history of international politics. On that date, in 1950, the Schuman Declaration1 was issued, seeking to release Europe from its centuries of fratricidal war, those conflagrations having just previously reached near suicidal proportions. The process of European integration – culminating in today’s European Union – was launched by six states at the heart of the continent, for the purposes of making war ‘not only unthinkable, but materially impossible.’ There is today little empirical question of Europe’s success. War between former bitter enemies has never been even remotely near the horizon during the period that has now become known as ‘The Long Peace,’ and, looking forward, such militarized conflict remains all but inconceivable. But was it the process of European integration that produced this achievement? And if so, is the model exportable to other regions? This essay catalogues the factors that account for Europe’s success in ending the scourge of war on a continent where it had been a commonly employed extension of politics for centuries. I conclude that the integration process represents an important contribution, but is only one of a plethora of causal factors that massively over-determined Europe’s long peace of our time, and that the European experiment is mostly non-exportable to other parts of the world.

Leibniz’s Political Vision for Europe

2015 ◽  
pp. 663-683
Author(s):  
Friedrich Beiderbeck
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Louis Xiv ◽  
Church Politics ◽  
Cultural Structures

This chapter examines Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s political vision for Europe, beginning with his views on the Holy Roman Empire and the Peace of Westphalia. It considers how Leibniz viewed Germany’s political and cultural structures and his support for the Reich, along with his thoughts on order, security, and law. It also discusses Leibniz’s modern notion of state and his ideas of territorial power, diplomacy, and international politics; his views on France’s foreign policy under Louis XIV and the War of Spanish Succession (1701–1713/14); and his dispute with Abbé de Saint Pierre over peace and balance of power in Europe. Finally, the chapter looks at Leibniz’s pronouncements on denominational issues and church politics, particularly the presence of Protestants and Catholics in Germany, and his arguments with regards to the House of Hanover and the role played by Great Britain in power politics as a counterbalance to French hegemony.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document