scholarly journals Regional order and peaceful change: Security communities as a via media in international relations theory

2014 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 519-535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Koschut
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Security Community ◽  
Intellectual Heritage ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
Regional Order ◽  
Community Concept

The security community concept generally inhabits a rather small niche in the study of International Relations, as the logic of community fundamentally challenges the prevailing logic of anarchy. In this article, it is argued both on ontological and theoretical grounds that the concept’s intellectual heritage and depth transcends the boundaries of existing theories. In this sense, the concept of security community serves as a via media by linking different strands of International Relations theory together and by bridging various theoretical gaps. This argument will be developed in two steps. Firstly, it will be shown that the security community framework developed by Karl W Deutsch is deeply rooted in International Political Theory without belonging to one particular branch. By locating the concept in International Political Theory, an exercise that has been neglected by the security community literature; it will be secondly demonstrated that the concept of security community takes the middle ground between specific strands of International Relations theory, as these strands are ultimately based on concepts of moral philosophy.

13. Normative International Relations Theory

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toni Erskine
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Just War ◽  
Ethical Reasoning ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Just War Tradition

This chapter deals with normative international relations theory, a field of study that relies on a variety of approaches and theories to explore moral expectations, decisions, and dilemmas in world politics. Normative IR theory has adopted — and adapted — conceptual categories such as communitarianism and cosmopolitanism from political theory. It also borrows from moral philosophy to designate different types of ethical reasoning, such as deontology and consequentialism. The chapter begins with an overview of the history, influences, and some of the categories that normative IR theory brings to the study of international relations. It then examines the ways in which normative IR theory engages with the hidden ethical assumptions of a range of IR approaches. It also considers the case of civilian deaths during the 2003 Iraq war in relation to the the just war tradition, and more specifically to the idea that soldiers have duties to exercise restraint in war.

scholarly journals Making Process, Not Progress: ASEAN and the Evolving East Asian Regional Order

2007 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 148-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Martin Jones ◽  
Michael L.R. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
International Relations ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Regional Identity ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Asian Financial Crisis ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Security Community ◽  
Regional Order

Since the Asian financial crisis of 1998, regional scholars and diplomats have maintained that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) represents an evolving economic and security community. In addition, many contend that what is known as the ASEAN process not only has transformed Southeast Asia's international relations, but has started to build a shared East Asian regional identity. ASEAN's deeper integration into a security, economic, and political community, as well as its extension into the ASEAN Plus Three processes that were begun after the 1997 financial crisis, offers a test case of the dominant assumptions in both ASEAN scholarship and liberal and idealist accounts of international relations theory. Three case studies of ASEAN operating as an economic and security community demonstrate, however, that the norms and practices that ASEAN promotes, rather than creating an integrated community, can only sustain a pattern of limited intergovernmental and bureaucratically rigid interaction.

scholarly journals Political Thought, International Relations theory and International Political Theory: an interpretation

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Brown
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Past History ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Thought

The relationship between political theory, including the history of political thought, and International Relations theory, including the history of international thought, has been, and to some extent remains, complex and troubled. On both sides of the Atlantic, the mid-twentieth century founders of International Relations as an academic discipline drew extensively on the canon of political thought, but approached the subject in an uncritical way, while political philosophers largely disdained the international as a focus. This changed in the 1970s and 1980s, with the emergence of the ‘justice industry’ based on critiques of Rawls’ A Theory of Justice and a consequent recovering of the past history of cosmopolitan and communitarian thought. A new discourse emerged in this period – International Political Theory – bridging the gap between political thought and international relations and stimulating a far more creative and scholarly approach to the history of international thought. However, in a social science environment dominated by the methods of economics, that is, formal theory and quantification, the new discourse of International Political Theory occupies a niche rather than existing at the centre of the discipline.

13. Normative International Relations Theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 236-262
Author(s):  
Toni Erskine
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Ethical Reasoning ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Different Types

This chapter deals with normative international relations theory, a field of study that relies on a variety of approaches and theories to explore moral expectations, decisions, and dilemmas in world politics. Normative IR theory has adopted—and adapted—conceptual categories such as communitarianism and cosmopolitanism from political theory. It also borrows from moral philosophy to designate different types of ethical reasoning, such as deontology and consequentialism. The chapter begins with an overview of the history, influences, and some of the categories that normative IR theory brings to the study of international relations. It then examines the ways in which normative IR theory engages with the hidden ethical assumptions of a range of IR approaches. The case study considers the ethics of war in the Iraq war.

The possibility of judgement: moralizing and theorizing in international relations

1992 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly Hutchings
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Critical Position ◽  
Moral Philosopher ◽  
Morality Politics ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
Dual Relation

International relations is one of the areas of social science which most clearly brings home the tensions involved in the dual relation of inquirer to object of inquiry, as both scientific observer and moral judge, particularly in times of war. As social scientists, we are required to understand and explain our object, as moral beings, we are required to judge or evaluate it. Received wisdom in international relations premises the possibility of the former on its rigid separation from the latter, so that the understanding of, for example, war, is necessarily distinct from the question of the justice or injustice of war. The former is the task of the science of international relations, the latter task is within the province of the moral philosopher or the normative theorist. I will be arguing in this article that this separation of the realms of morality and politics, on which so much social science and moral philosophy is founded, can be traced back to Kant's critical philosophy, and that this separation has problematic consequences for the possibility of both explanation and evaluation in the international sphere. My argument falls into three parts. In the first part, I will put forward a condensed reading of the Kantian critical position and the problems that it poses. In the second and third parts, I will demonstrate how the discussion of international relations both in moral philosophy, and in political theory, is constructed by the Kantian morality/politics dichotomy, and how this limits and distorts both our moralizing and our theorizing. One contention in the third section of the paper will be that even the recent challenges to traditional international political theory, posed by critical theory and post-structuralism, are in danger of slipping back into a reliance on the morality/politics division, in spite of efforts to overcome it.

Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Bertoldi
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Dominant Mode ◽  
Difference Principle ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
International Anarchy

Charles Beitz’s Political Theory and International Relations (PTIR) played a pioneering role for contemporary international political theory by bringing together two domains of inquiry that had proceeded largely independently from each other in the twentieth century. This chapter will assess PTIR’s contributions to international political theory and explore its continuing relevance for debates on sovereignty, human rights, and globalization in a plural world. After reviewing the ways in which PTIR shaped the evolution of both international relations theory and political theory by questioning the central assumptions of international anarchy and political autonomy and by establishing cosmopolitanism as the dominant mode of analysis for international political theory with its groundbreaking argument for a global difference principle, the chapter will conclude by identifying several productive tensions in Beitz’s work that can further enrich contemporary discussions of global justice.

Minority Rights

2018 ◽  
pp. 165-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Kymlicka
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
International Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Level ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
Rights Issues

It has often been noted that the political claims of minorities and indigenous peoples are marginalized within traditional state-centric international political theory; but perhaps more surprisingly, they are also marginalized within much contemporary cosmopolitan political theory. In this chapter, I will argue that neither cosmopolitanism nor statism as currently theorized is well equipped to evaluate the normative claims at stake in many minority rights issues. I begin by discussing how the “minority question” arose as an issue within international relations—that is, why minorities have been seen as a problem and a threat to international order—and how international actors have historically attempted to contain the problem, often in ways that were deeply unjust to minorities. I will then consider recent efforts to advance a pro-minority agenda at the international level, and how this agenda helps reveal some of the limits of both cosmopolitan and statist approaches to IPT.

Beyond the Great Divide: globalization and the theory of international relations

1998 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-498 ◽  
Author(s):  
IAN CLARK
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Analytical Model ◽  
External Environment ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
State Action ◽  
Theoretical Scheme ◽  
General Significance ◽  
External Forces

This article assesses the general significance for International Relations theory of the literature on globalization. It argues that globalization is a pervasively unsettling process which needs to be explained not only as an issue in its own right but for the insight which it affords into cognate areas of theory. In short, it advances an analytical model whereby globalization itself can be understood and utilizes this as a theoretical scheme that may be applied more generally. The predominant conceptualization of the globalization issue within International Relations has been the debate between the proponents of state redundancy and the champions of continuing state potency. In turn, these arguments rest upon an image of state capacities being eroded by external forces, or alternatively of external forces being generated by state action. In either case, there is the assumed duality of the state(s) set off from, and ranged against, a seemingly external environment. Instead, this article argues that the state occupies a middle ground between the internal and external and is itself both shaped by and formative of the process of globalization.

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