Why read Reinhold Niebuhr now?

2020 ◽  
pp. 175508822098109
Author(s):  
Liane Hartnett ◽  
Lucian Ashworth
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
World Order ◽  
Jimmy Carter ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Reinhold Niebuhr ◽  
Intellectual Influence ◽  
Hans Morgenthau ◽  
Martin Luther King

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) is perhaps the best known North American theologian of the twentieth century. Over the course of his life he was a Christian socialist, pacifist, a staunch anti-communist, and an architect of vital-centre liberalism. Niebuhr wrote on themes as diverse as war, democracy, world order, political economy and race. So significant was Niebuhr’s intellectual influence that George Kennan once described him as ‘the father of us all’. Indeed, from the thought of Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter, Martin Luther King Jr. to Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Hans Morgenthau to Kenneth Waltz, E.H. Carr to Jean Bethke Elshtain, Niebuhr has helped shape International Relations. Bringing together intellectual historians and international political theorists, this special issue asks whether Niebuhr’s thought remains relevant to our times? Can he help us think about democracy, power, race, the use of force, and cruelty in a moment when ethnonationalism appears ascendant and democracy in decline?

The Justification and Critique of Coercion as World Order Politics

2021 ◽  
pp. 489-500
Author(s):  
Christopher Daase ◽  
Nicole Deitelhoff
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
World Order ◽  
International Order ◽  
Physical Force ◽  
Coercive Measures ◽  
Economic Coercion ◽  
Normative Expectations

The present chapter turns from the justification of war (the use of force) to the justification of coercion. It proceeds on the assumption that to stabilize the current international order requires less ‘legitimate force’ and more ‘legitimate coercion’ since in most institutions the enforcement of norms—as the very basis of order—does not only or even primarily rely on physical force but on various forms of political and economic coercion. The chapter distinguishes various forms of coercion and reconstructs debates in International Law and International Relations with regard to their legality, legitimacy, and effectiveness. Doing so, Christopher Daase and Nicole Deitelhoff intend to broaden the debate on world order by redirecting the focus from the use of force to the use of less violent coercive measures. Specifically, the chapter introduces a concept of sanction as a means of communicating normative expectations to the normative community rather than executing punishments.

scholarly journals Introduction – Plausible, Norms of Warfare: Reducing the Gap Between the Normative and the Empirical

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 193-202
Author(s):  
Ariel Colonomos ◽  
Richard Beardsworth
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Ethical Problems ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Normative Analysis ◽  
Normative Knowledge

Abstract This special issue argues in favor of a new approach to the study of norms of warfare, which combines a normative analysis of ethical problems arising in war with an explanatory analysis of the use of force. Norms of warfare go as far back as Antiquity, and their study has followed a long historical path. In recent years, the ethics of war, mostly grounded in philosophy, has considerably expanded as a field. Notwithstanding such efforts to refine our normative knowledge of what should be just norms for the use of force, we argue that a more interdisciplinary approach is required to orient the study of the laws of war. In this Special Issue, proposals are made that, along with normative analysis, bring to the discussion not only disciplines such as political science and international relations, but also social theory, psychology and the neurosciences. We argue from a non-ideal perspective, that in order for norms to be just, they need to be ‘plausible’ for those who should abide by them. They also need to make sense in the context of democratic societies that favor a pluralistic debate on justice and ethics. Epistemically, we argue that, in order to understand if norms are plausible and just, reducing the gap between the normative and the empirical is required.

International Relations Theory

2021 ◽  
pp. 560-578
Author(s):  
Richard J. Hoskins
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
The Other ◽  
English School ◽  
Ethical Judgement ◽  
Reinhold Niebuhr ◽  
Christian Realism ◽  
A Value ◽  
Hans Morgenthau

The study of international relations is dominated by the school of Realism, articulated in its classical form by Hans Morgenthau. It teaches that great powers are focused on enhancing their national interest defined in terms of power: military, political, and economic. Reinhold Niebuhr became known as the father of Christian Realism, adding his own biblical and Augustinian insights about human nature and its effects on the evil uses of power. Traditionally, both forms of Realism incorporated ethical judgement within their analysis. After Niebuhr’s death, Realism became neorealism, a value-free social science which eschews ethical judgement as any part of international relations study, as did the other major schools—except for the English School. This chapter argues that the English School represents the modern paradigm closest to Niebuhr’s perspective.

scholarly journals In search of Karl Polanyi’s International Relations theory

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Dale
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
European Integration ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
World Order ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
International Order ◽  
New Regionalism ◽  
Karl Polanyi

AbstractKarl Polanyi is principally known as an economic historian and a theorist of international political economy. His theses are commonly encountered in debates concerning globalisation, regionalism, regulation and deregulation, and neoliberalism. But the standard depiction of his ideas is based upon a highly restricted corpus of his work: essentially, his published writings, in English, from the 1940s and 1950s. Drawing upon a broader range of Polanyi’s work in Hungarian, German, and English, this article examines his less well-known analyses of international politics and world order. It sketches the main lineaments of Polanyi’s international thought from the 1910s until the mid-1940s, charting his evolution from Wilsonian liberal, via debates within British pacifism, towards a position close to E. H. Carr’s realism. It reconstructs the dialectic of universalism and regionalism in Polanyi’s prospectus for postwar international order, with a focus upon his theory of ‘tame empires’ and its extension by neo-Polanyian theorists of the ‘new regionalism’ and European integration. It explores the tensions and contradictions in Polanyi’s analysis, and, finally, it hypothesises that the failure of his postwar predictions provides a clue as to why his research on international relations dried up in the 1950s.

scholarly journals From Latin American International Political Economy to Latin American Global Political Economy

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-33
Author(s):  
Ernesto Vivares ◽  
Raúl Salgado Espinoza
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Doctoral Programs ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
World Order ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
Sociological Approach ◽  
Global Challenges

This paper focuses on the differences between International Political Economy (IPE) versus Global Political Economy (GPE) in Latin America. It explores how IPE tends to be taught and researched beyond mainstream IPE but in dialogue with it. It engages with the main literature of this field to discuss the contours and extension of a transition in teaching and research. It rests upon a historical sociological approach and employs a qualitative analysis of syllabi and curricula of various masters and doctoral programs on International Relations/Studies and underlying disciplines, and is complemented with semi-structured interviews with leading scholars of IPE from across the region. The paper argues that there is a shift from mainstream IPE to a new Latin American GPE as the result of a revitalization of the field and as a response to the new regional and global challenges. New dynamics of development, conflict and a changing world order coexist with old problems, pushing our field to find new responses, demonstrating the limits of the traditional knowledge, and requiring the development of new contributions. While the shift may be minor, it is constant and steady, and is neither homogenous nor dominated by a unique vision of the field, but it is defined by heterogeneity and plurality.

scholarly journals Introduction: Taking stock of security and finance

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Boy ◽  
John Morris ◽  
Mariana Santos
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theoretical Research ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Research

When, seven years ago, Marieke de Goede first drew attention to the historical and conceptual entanglements between the logics of finance and security, and to the artificial – yet meaningful – divide between the two in modernity, this was not merely a call for a new research programme. Attempting to hold together these two objects of disciplinary enquiry, and becoming aware of the tendency to collapse one into the other inherent to International Political Economy (IPE) or International Relations (IR) analytics, was also a much needed exercise of disciplinary critique, consistent with interrogating divides between the economic and the social, the financial and cultural. In other words, more than just a new object or field of empirical and theoretical research, the finance-security nexus was proposed as a device for critically and genealogically thinking through distinct disciplinary approaches to economy, futurity and populations. To that end, this special issue proposes to take stock of the multiple ways in which the finance-security nexus has been deployed as such a device of (post)disciplinary critique.

The Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Economic Justice ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Reinhold Niebuhr ◽  
Social Activists ◽  
And Gender

Reinhold Niebuhr was a theologian, writer, and public intellectual who influenced religious leaders and social activists in the United State over four crucial decades in the middle of the twentieth century. This Handbook begins by tracing the development of his work through those years and provides an introduction to the dialogue partners and intellectual adversaries whom he influenced and who shaped his own thinking. Subsequent chapters deal with major topics in theology and ethics, providing systematic focus to Niebuhr’s wide-ranging works that were directed to many different audiences. These are followed by chapters that examine Niebuhr’s contributions to political thinking and policymaking on issues including international relations, pacifism and the use of force, racial and economic justice, family life and gender equality, and environmental concerns. Concluding essays examine Niebuhr’s legacy and continuing influence.

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