The absence of great power responsibility in global environmental politics

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-32
Author(s):  
Steven Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Economic Management ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Special Responsibilities ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Global Affairs ◽  
Special Rights ◽  
The Relationship

Great powers routinely face demands to take on special responsibilities to address major concerns in global affairs, and often gain special rights for doing so. These areas include peace and security, global economic management, development, and egregious violations of human rights. Despite the rise in the importance and centrality of global environmental concerns, especially climate change and issues covered by the new Sustainable Development Goals, norms or institutions that demand or recognize great power responsibility are notably absent. This absence is puzzling given expectations in several major strands of International Relations theory, including the English School, realism, liberalism, and constructivism. Drawing on the reasoning behind these expectations, the absence of great power responsibility can be explained by a lack of congruence between systemic and environmental “great powers,” weak empirical links between action on the environment and the maintenance of international order, and no link to special rights. Instead, the institutionalized distribution of environmental responsibilities arose out of North–South conflict and has eroded over time, becoming more diffuse and decentered from ideas of state responsibility. These findings suggest a need to rethink the relationship among great powers and special rights and responsibilities regarding the environment, as well as other new issues of systemic importance.

scholarly journals Interpreting great power rights in international society: Debating China’s right to a sphere of influence

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Zala
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
International Society ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
English School ◽  
Special Responsibilities ◽  
Sphere Of Influence ◽  
Special Rights ◽  
Scholarly Attention

The special rights and responsibilities of the great powers have traditionally been treated as a key component – even a primary institution – of international society in the English School literature. Recent interpretivist work has focused on the meanings of special responsibilities in contemporary international society with far less scholarly attention being given to the corollary of this – special rights. This article uses an interpretivist approach to attempt to uncover what recent debates over China’s right or otherwise to a sphere of influence in East Asia tells us about understandings of great power rights in contemporary international society. The argument advanced is that if Beijing’s right to a sphere of influence is successfully rejected by the rest of international society without repudiating its status as a great power more broadly, China will indeed be a great power without historical precedent.

scholarly journals Management and Economics: Question of Development Goals

Upravlenie ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 16-21
Author(s):  
Толкачев ◽  
P. Tolkachev
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Economic Management ◽  
Common Path ◽  
Fundamental Properties ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Large Groups ◽  
The Relationship

The article discusses the relationship of economic management with the economic basis. The thesis is substantiated that effective economic management depends on economic ideal, to which society will strive to achieve. The world surrounding a person constantly retains its essential fundamental properties. And in this way it is perfect. Man spiritually assumes himself above nature. Potentially, he sees himself as a master of the natural world. However, acting in nature as an independent free force, he constantly reveals his imperfect. Because of his limited knowledge of the infinitely complex nature, everything that a person creates is imperfect. The path to perfection is the natural goal of man’s life on earth. However, on this common path, all nations and their large groups – civilizations – are moving along different roads. And in modern conditions, these differences have reached a dangerous feature – more and more the confrontation of civilizations is emerging. The historical feature of the Russian economic worldview is the absolute priority of moral ideals. Its deep economic ideals are not aggressive in relation to other countries and peoples. These ideals are in finding and multiplying of good. Therefore, potentially, Russia can counteract the negative scenario of the development of civilizational conflicts.

The Ubiquity of Oil

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Rosemary A. Kelanic
Keyword(s):  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Systematic Framework

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the relationship between oil and great power politics. For over a hundred years, oil has been ubiquitous as both an object of political intrigue and a feature of everyday life, yet its effects on the behavior of major powers remain poorly understood. This book focuses on one particular aspect of oil: its coercive potential. Across time and space, great powers have feared that dependence on imported petroleum might make them vulnerable to coercion by hostile actors. They worry that an enemy could cut off oil to weaken them militarily or punish them economically, and then use this threat as a basis for political blackmail. Oil is so essential to great powers that taking a state's imports hostage could give an enemy significant leverage in a dispute. The book presents the first systematic framework to understand how fears of oil coercion shape international affairs. Great powers counter prospective threats with costly and risky policies that lessen vulnerability, ideally, before the country can be targeted. These measures, which can be called “anticipatory strategies,” vary enormously, from self-sufficiency efforts to actions as extreme as launching wars.

Great Powers, Hierarchy, and Endogenous Regimes: Rethinking the Domestic Causes of Peace

2015 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 557-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick J. McDonald
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Statistical Relationship ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Design Changes ◽  
New States ◽  
Regime Types ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis paper blends recent research on hierarchy and democratization to examine the theoretical and empirical costs of treating regime type exogenously in the literature most identified with studying its impact on international politics. It argues that the apparent peace among democratic states that emerges in the aftermath of World War I is not caused by domestic institutional attributes normally associated with democracy. Instead, this peace is an artifact of historically specific great power settlements. These settlements shape subsequent aggregate patterns of military conflict by altering the organizational configuration of the system in three critical ways—by creating new states, by altering hierarchical orders, and by influencing regime type in states. These claims are defended with a series of tests that show first how the statistical relationship between democracy and peace has exhibited substantial variation across great power orders; second, that this statistical relationship breaks down with theoretically motivated research design changes; and third, that great powers foster peace and similar regime types within their hierarchical orders. In short, the relationship between democracy and peace is spurious. The international political order is still built and managed by great powers.

2. Ideas about environmental protection

2020 ◽  
pp. 54-92
Author(s):  
Jean-Frédéric Morin ◽  
Amandine Orsini ◽  
Sikina Jinnah
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Causal Beliefs ◽  
Global Environmental Governance ◽  
World Views ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the ideas and debates which shape global environmental politics. At least three types of socially constructed ideas play a key role in international environmental governance: world views, causal beliefs, and social norms. However, ideas are not universally shared, which means that ideological clashes are a feature of global environmental governance. The chapter looks at five of the major ideological debates that have marked the evolution of global environmental governance. The first two debates present conflicting world views: the first concerns the scope of environmental values, while the second examines the intrinsic values of non-human organisms. The following two debates concern causal beliefs: one is about the relationship between human intervention and environmental protection, while the other concerns the relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation. The last debate considers different social norms related to environmental justice and the appropriate behaviours expected towards historically marginalized populations.

scholarly journals Making Representations: The SDG Process and Major Groups’ Images of the Future

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Henrike Knappe ◽  
Oscar Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Central Research ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The Future ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Images Of The Future

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) process aimed to be more inclusive, transparent, and participatory than prior United Nations processes. This article traces the practices of representation that were performed by civil society actors during the SDG process. In doing so, we advance a performative approach in which the very process of making representation is examined. Its aim is to conceptualize and study representation as an aesthetic and political practice. This leads to the two central research questions of this article: How do civil society organizations in global environmental politics make representative claims by picturing their envisioned future? How are future representations (that is, the representation of futures or future beings) related to actor positions during the SDG process? Special emphasis is given to representations of “the future” as an ever-present frame of reference in environmental politics. Based on a systematic content analysis of the statements of two Major Groups—Children, and Youth and Farmers—we discuss the variety of future representations between the Major Groups and how especially more radical future representations are connected to rather precarious actor positions in representative claims.

scholarly journals Revisiting Insularity and Expansion: A Theory Note

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
John M. Schuessler ◽  
Joshua Shifrinson ◽  
David Blagden
Keyword(s):  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
Bodies Of Water ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Power And Influence ◽  
At Home

What is the relationship between insularity—a state’s separation from other states via large bodies of water—and expansion? The received wisdom, prominent in (though not exclusive to) realist theories, holds that insularity constrains expansion by making conquest difficult. We contend, by contrast, that this received wisdom faces important limits. Focusing on U.S. expansion via means short of conquest, we interrogate the underlying theoretical logics to demonstrate that insular powers enjoy two distinct advantages when it comes to expansion. First, insularity translates into a “freedom to roam”: because insular powers are less threatened at home, they can project more power and influence abroad. Second, insularity “sterilizes” power, which explains why insular powers are seen as attractive security providers and why we do not see more counterbalancing against them. On net, existing scholarship is correct to argue that insularity impedes conquest between great powers. Still, it has missed the ways that insularity abets expansion via spheres of influence abroad. One consequence is an under-appreciation for the role of geography writ large and insularity in particular in shaping contemporary great power behavior.

PENGARUH PRODUK DOMESTIK BRUTO, INFLASI DAN RASIO GINI TERHADAP PENGANGGURAN TERBUKA DI PROVINSI DKI JAKARTA

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sri Mahendra Putra Wirawan
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Significant Influence ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Research Model ◽  
Economic Region ◽  
Regression Methods ◽  
Price Increases ◽  
Comprehensive Picture ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
The Relationship

Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP) which provides a comprehensive picture of the economic conditions of a region is indicator for analyzing economic region development. Another indicator that is no less important is inflation as an indicator to see the level of changes in price increases due to an increase in the money supply that causes rising prices. The success of development must also look at the income inequality of its population which is illustrated by this ratio. One of the main regional development goals is to improve the welfare of its people, where to see the level of community welfare, among others, can be seen from the level of unemployment in an area. To that end, in order to get an overview of the effects of GRDP, inflation and the ratio of gini to unemployment in DKI Jakarta for the last ten years (2007-2016), an analysis was carried out using multiple linear regression methods. As a result, together the relationship between GRDP, inflation and the Gini ratio is categorized as "very strong" with a score of 0.936, and has a significant influence on unemployment. Partially, the GRDP gives a significant influence, but inflation and gini ratio do not have a significant influence. GDP, inflation and the Gini ratio together for the last ten years have contributed 81.4% to unemployment in DKI Jakarta, while the remaining 18.6% is influenced by other variables not included in this research model, so for reduce unemployment in DKI Jakarta, programs that are oriented to economic growth, suppressing inflation and decreasing this ratio need to be carried out simultaneously. Keywords: GRDP, inflation, unemployment, DKI Jakarta, GINI ratio  

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