scholarly journals Understanding non-governmental organizations in world politics: The promise and pitfalls of the early ‘science of internationalism’

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 884-905 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Richard Davies
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
World War ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World ◽  
Century Science ◽  
20Th Century Science

The years immediately preceding the First World War witnessed the development of a significant body of literature claiming to establish a ‘science of internationalism’. This article draws attention to the importance of this literature, especially in relation to understanding the roles of non-governmental organizations in world politics. It elaborates the ways in which this literature sheds light on issues that have become central to 21st-century debates, including the characteristics, influence and legitimacy of non-governmental organizations in international relations. Among the principal authors discussed in the article are Paul Otlet, Henri La Fontaine and Alfred Fried, whose role in the development of international theory has previously received insufficient attention. The article concludes with an evaluation of potential lessons to be drawn from the experience of the early 20th-century ‘science of internationalism’.

22. NGOs in world politics

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jutta Joachim
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Climate Justice ◽  
International Level ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Transnational Ngos

This chapter examines the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in world politics. It considers what distinguishes NGOs from other actors in international politics, what types of influence NGOs exert in international relations, and whether NGOs contribute to more democratic policy-making at the international level. The chapter also discusses the growing importance of NGOs and presents two case studies that illustrate how they have contributed to the emergence of new norms through their engagement with international governmental organizations (IGOs): the first is about campaigns run by transnational NGOs to end violence against women and the second is about their climate justice activism. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether transnational NGOs contribute to more democracy at the international level.

Philosophical idealism and international politics: Bosanquet, Treitschke and war

1975 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Savigear
Keyword(s):  
International Politics ◽  
First World War ◽  
The State ◽  
General Interest ◽  
World War ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

Bernard Bosanquet spent the First World War at his cottage in Oxshott, in Surrey, and from here he measured the implications of the conflict for his philosophy of the state. The result of this reflection is available to us in the letters which he wrote during the war, and a variety of lectures and papers. His ideas, therefore, have a general interest to students of international theory.

Sun Yat-sen and the Japanese: 1914–16

1972 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 385-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert A. Altman ◽  
Harold Z. Schiffrin
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
First World War ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Fair Share ◽  
Power Struggle ◽  
World War ◽  
Chinese Nationalism ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Grand Prize ◽  
First World

The First World War changed the pattern of international relations in East Asia. What had previously been another arena for the European power struggle became the cockpit for two regional forces, Japanese expansionism and incipient Chinese nationalism. The confrontation between the two, which was to last for a quarter of a century, began as a most unequal contest. Great power rivalry had enabled China to balance off her enemies and to maintain her status as a sovereign entity. But with Europe distracted, China was helpless, and Japan had a unique opportunity to pursue an independent expansionist policy. Instead of cooperating with England and the other powers in order to get a fair share of the China spoils, after 1914 Japan could make her bid for the grand prize, exclusive access to China's resources. Thus the European powers’ pre-occupation with mutual slaughter exposed China to extreme danger, greater than that which she had faced during the heyday of classical imperialism.1 But Japan was not alone in welcoming the European retreat. Japan’s opportunity was also Sun Yat-sen's opportunity.

: A British School of International Relations

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Dunne
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
British School ◽  
Great Debate ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Vexed Question ◽  
First World

After considering the vexed question of whether it is possible to speak of a collective identity shared by scholars working in Britain, this chapter examines the debate surrounding the birth of international relations in the aftermath of the First World War. It discusses the arguments mobilized by E. H. Carr against the so-called idealists. This leads into a discussion of the evolution of a distinctive voice in British international relations that sought to overcome the realist–idealist dualism which defined what has become known as the first ‘great debate’. The conclusion briefly considers how far contemporary thinking on international relations builds on this attempt to set out an agenda that was both different from politics as traditionally conceived, and different from international relations as pursued in the United States.

Foreign Policy and the Nationality Problem in Austria-Hungary, 1867–1914

1967 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 37-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solomon Wank
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Science Methods ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Science Methods ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Internal Policy ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

The theories on foreign policy and international relations which have emerged in the last decade stress the interaction between foreign policy and internal social structure. Contemporary analysis of this interaction has benefited from refined social science methods and concepts developed since the end of the Second World War, but awareness of the connection between foreign policy and internal policy is not new. For instance, as long ago as the eve of the First World War Rudolf Goldscheid wrote that “nothing is more Utopian than the belief that substantial alterations in internal policy can be realized without simultaneous corresponding changes in foreign [policy] and vice versa.” The interaction between Austro-Hungarian foreign policy and the nationality problem in the monarchy from 1867 until 1914 is a striking example of Goldscheid's general thesis.

scholarly journals The English school and the classical approach: Between modernism and interpretivism

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Bevir ◽  
Ian Hall
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
First World War ◽  
English School ◽  
Classical Approach ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
British Committee ◽  
Hedley Bull ◽  
First World

This article analyses the evolution of the English school’s approach to international relations from the work of the early British Committee in the late 1950s and early 1960s to its revival in the 1990s and afterwards. It argues that the school’s so-called ‘classical approach’ was shaped by the crisis of developmental historicism brought on by the First World War and by the reactions of historians like Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight to the rise of modernist social science in the twentieth century. It characterises the classical approach, as advanced by Hedley Bull, as a form of ‘reluctant modernism’ with underlying interpretivist commitments and unresolved tensions with modernist approaches. It argues that to resolve some of the confusion concerning its preferred approach to the study of international relations, the English school should return to the interpretivist commitments of its early thinkers.

French War Aims and the American Challenge, 1914–1918

1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 877-894 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
First World War ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
World War ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Aims ◽  
First World

Between 1917 and 1919 the United States made its first, spectacular intrusion into European power politics. For President Wilson, entry into the First World War was a chance not only to eliminate an immediate threat to American interests but also to transform international relations. The time had come to weld the industrialized countries into a community of interest, based on a shared loyalty to representative government and the market economy, expressed by membership of a League of Nations, and in which economic and territorial causes of tension would have been removed. But hardly had the German obstacle to this programme been overcome before, at the peace conference of 1919, Wilson ran up against almost equally determined obstruction from his former allies. This article examines one source of that antagonism, in the latent conflict before the armistice between American war aims and those of France. It argues that French policy was moulded by a tension between the Paris leaders' own desires for the settlement with Germany and their need to preserve a system of alliances deemed essential for French security in the future as well as for the war itself. By 1917 French governments were already confronted with dilemmas which were to harass them for the succeeding twenty years.

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