scholarly journals Towards a Confucian geopolitics: A critical remark

2021 ◽  
pp. 204382062110177
Author(s):  
Xin Liu
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Political Geography ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Critical Remark ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
General Issue ◽  
Cultural Perspectives ◽  
Official Ideology

This commentary reviews An et al.’s (2021) article, ‘Towards Confucian Geopolitics’. It first acknowledges the article’s achievement in highlighting the importance of reading geopolitics by excavating the Chinese traditions and cultural perspectives. However, the commentary also points out that An et al.’s article has failed to understand the complex nature of the Confucian ideology by differentiating between real-world political struggle and cultural idealism. The lack of an evolving political geography has made their reading of Confucianism as either an official ideology or spatialisation unable to correspond with concrete historical realities. Specifically, it has resulted in over-simplification in benchmarking Chinese history and the dichotomous understanding of Hua-Yi division. The commentary further points out that the above problem is a general issue with the culturalist approach to world politics.

ERGUN ÖZBUDUN, Contemporary Turkish Politics: Challenges to Democratic Consolidation (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2000). Pp. 181. $49.95 cloth.

2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 657-660
Author(s):  
Frank Tachau
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Current Literature ◽  
Real World ◽  
Democratic Consolidation ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Southern Europe ◽  
Turkish Politics ◽  
Political Studies

Based on Professor Özbudun's lectures at Bilkent University, this book is at once compact, highly readable, and very insightful. Unlike much current literature on Turkey, the analysis is set in a broad and informed comparative context. Turkey, the author points out, has been left out of comparative political studies, particularly those encompassing the Middle East and southern Europe, in which arguably it could (or should) have been included. Scholarly neglect thus reflects real-world politics: Turkey falls between two worlds, one of which it once largely controlled, the other to which it currently aspires to belong. This lacuna is one of the factors that persuaded Özbudun to publish this volume.

scholarly journals The Epistemological Implications of Critical Complexity Thinking for Operational Research

Systems ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hennie Kruger ◽  
Anné Verhoef ◽  
Rika Preiser
Keyword(s):  
Complexity Theory ◽  
Real World ◽  
Operational Research ◽  
Initial Conditions ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
The Real ◽  
Complexity Thinking ◽  
The World ◽  
Mathematical Techniques ◽  
Complex Phenomena

Classical operational research (OR) is mainly concerned with the use of mathematical techniques and models used in decision-making situations. The basic assumptions of OR presuppose that the structure of the world is one of order and predictability. Although this positivistic approach produces significant results when levels of certainty and initial conditions are stable, it is limited when faced with an acknowledgement of the complex nature of the real world. This paper aims to highlight that by drawing on a general understanding of complexity theory, classical OR approaches can be enriched and broadened by adopting an epistemology based on the assumption that the underlying mechanisms governing the world are complex. It is argued that complexity theory (as interpreted by the philosopher Paul Cilliers) acknowledges the complex nature of the real world and helps to identify the characteristics of complex phenomena. By aligning OR epistemologies with the acknowledgment of complexity, new modelling methods could be developed. In addition, the implications for knowledge generating processes through boundary setting, as well as the provisional nature of such knowledge and what (ethical) responsibilities accompany the study of complex phenomena, will be discussed. Examples are presented to highlight the epistemological implications of complexity thinking for OR.

How Reputation Matters in International Relations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark J.C. Crescenzi
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Real World ◽  
World Politics

This chapter establishes a theory of reputation’s role in international relations. Using concepts such as learning and information, the theoretical model argues that reputation can impact a nation’s decision about whether to cooperate and negotiate peacefully with another state, or whether, based on that other state’s reputation, to decide to go towar. The chapter contains an historical illustration of the relevance and role of reputation in real-world politics that focuses on Tsar Alexander’s anticipation of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, and how Napoleon’s past actions in relation to other states influenced Alexander.

How Motivation Influences Political Decision Making

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian J. Gaines ◽  
Benjamin R. Kantack
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Theory ◽  
Real World ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Information Collection ◽  
Color Information ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Generic Models ◽  
Experimental Subjects ◽  
Political Decision Making

Although motivation undergirds virtually all aspects of political decision making, its influence is often unacknowledged, or taken for granted, in behavioral political science. Motivations are inevitably important in generic models of decision theory. In real-world politics, two crucially important venues for motivational effects are the decision of whether or not to vote, and how (or, whether) partisanship and other policy views color information-collection, so that people choose and then justify, rather than studying options before choosing. For researchers, motivations of survey respondents and experimental subjects are deeply important, but only just beginning to garner the attention they deserve.

scholarly journals Spatio-temporal networks: reachability, centrality and robustness

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 160196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Williams ◽  
Mirco Musolesi
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Failure Modes ◽  
Urban Transport ◽  
Transport Systems ◽  
Centrality Measures ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Temporal Networks ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Temporal System ◽  
Spatio Temporal

Recent advances in spatial and temporal networks have enabled researchers to more-accurately describe many real-world systems such as urban transport networks. In this paper, we study the response of real-world spatio-temporal networks to random error and systematic attack, taking a unified view of their spatial and temporal performance. We propose a model of spatio-temporal paths in time-varying spatially embedded networks which captures the property that, as in many real-world systems, interaction between nodes is non-instantaneous and governed by the space in which they are embedded. Through numerical experiments on three real-world urban transport systems, we study the effect of node failure on a network's topological, temporal and spatial structure. We also demonstrate the broader applicability of this framework to three other classes of network. To identify weaknesses specific to the behaviour of a spatio-temporal system, we introduce centrality measures that evaluate the importance of a node as a structural bridge and its role in supporting spatio-temporally efficient flows through the network. This exposes the complex nature of fragility in a spatio-temporal system, showing that there is a variety of failure modes when a network is subject to systematic attacks.

scholarly journals Roots and Shoots: Building Bridges between Schools and Their Communities

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 12543
Author(s):  
Jan Cincera ◽  
Zuzana Gallayova ◽  
Simona Kuciakova ◽  
Daphne Goldman
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Real World ◽  
Education Program ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Slovak Republic ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Educational Approach ◽  
Local Sustainability ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Qualitative Analyses

The study analyses the benefits and challenges emerging from students’ interactions with community, teachers, and other students in the place-based education program Roots and Shoots, in the Slovak Republic. The study is based on qualitative analyses of data obtained from eight teachers and 56 students interviewed in eight focus groups, and on quantitative data obtained from 53 students. Both the students and the teachers perceived the Roots and Shoots program as highly successful. The implementation of the program was challenged by the necessity of dealing with different levels of the students’ participation in decision-making, tensions between the involved and uninvolved students, and the complex nature of local sustainability issues. This study discusses the importance of engaging students in the participative process of solving real-world issues, reflecting the challenges of this educational approach.

Political Approaches

2018 ◽  
pp. 60-78
Author(s):  
Michael N. Barnett ◽  
Martha Finnemore
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Society ◽  
Real World ◽  
Social World ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Interstate Cooperation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
World Organization

This chapter examines how prominent theories capture the various ways that the UN affects world politics. Different theories of international relations (IR) cast the UN in distinctive roles, which logically lead scholars to identify distinctive kinds of effects. We identify five roles that the UN might have: as an agent of great powers doing their bidding; as a mechanism for interstate cooperation; as a governor of an international society of states; as a constructor of the social world; and as a legitimation forum. Each role has roots in a well-known theory of international politics. In many, perhaps most, real-world political situations, the UN plays more than one of these roles, but these stylized theoretical arguments about the world body’s influence help discipline our thinking. They force us to be explicit about which effects of the world organization we think are important, what is causing them, and why.

Equivalency Framing in Political Decision Making

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asmus Olsen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Real World ◽  
Standard Form ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Controlled Environment ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
The World ◽  
Actual Use ◽  
Political Decision Making

Politics is increasingly reliant on numerical descriptions of the world. Numbers are relied upon for their ability to communicate some unambiguous facts of life. Equivalence frames are equivalent descriptions of the same quantity and they help us understand how different ways of presenting the objectively same piece of numerical information affect political behavior. Equivalence framing effects denote that these different presentation of the fundamentally same fact have very profound effects on preferences. However, most research in political behavior have relied on other forms of framing and largely regarded equivalence framing as a well-defined concept without much relevance to real-world politics. The standard form of equivalence framing changes the valence of a label which describes the same numerical fact. This form of negative and positive framing of the same metric will often elicit very different responses for the recipient of the information. A less studied type of equivalence framing in political behavior manipulates the same numerical fact but with a different metric or scale. These have often not been explicitly recognized as equivalence frames but are clearly an important example in a world of numbers. As for valence manipulation, changing the metric can also have profound effects. Moving forward studies of equivalence framing must both gain a better descriptive understanding of the actual use and abuse of equivalence frames in observational setting and at the same time aim to understand the causal properties of equivalence frames in the field—outside the controlled environment of the survey or lab where they most often are studied.

The Globalization of World Politics

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Real World ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Global Issues ◽  
Apply Theory ◽  
Eighth Edition ◽  
Comprehensive Coverage

The Globalization of World Politics is an introduction to international relations (IR) and offers comprehensive coverage of key theories and global issues. The eighth edition features several new chapters that reflect on the latest developments in the field, including postcolonial and decolonial approaches, and refugees and forced migration. Pedagogical features—such as case studies and questions, a debating feature, and end-of-chapter questions—help readers to evaluate key IR debates and apply theory and IR concepts to real world events.

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