The Challenge of September 11 to Secularism in International Relations

2002 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Philpott
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
International System ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Public Religion ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Generation ◽  
Authority Structure ◽  
Islamic Revivalism

The attacks of September 11, 2001, highlight the general absence of attention to religion in international scholarship. The absence is understandable, for it arises from the secularized nature of the authority structure of the international system, described here as the “Westphalian synthesis.” Over the past generation, though, the global rise of public religion has challenged several planks of the synthesis. The sharpest challenge is “radical Islamic revivalism,” a political theology that has its roots in the early twentieth century and that gave rise to al-Qaeda. If international relations scholars are to understand the events of September 11, they ought to devote more attention to the way in which radical Islamic revivalism and public religion shape international relations, sometimes in dramatic ways.

Aftershocks

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seva Gunitsky
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
International System ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sudden Rise ◽  
The World ◽  
National Borders

Over the past century, democracy spread around the world in turbulent bursts of change, sweeping across national borders in dramatic cascades of revolution and reform. This book offers a new global-oriented explanation for this wavelike spread and retreat—not only of democracy but also of its twentieth-century rivals, fascism, and communism. The book argues that waves of regime change are driven by the aftermath of cataclysmic disruptions to the international system. These hegemonic shocks, marked by the sudden rise and fall of great powers, have been essential and often-neglected drivers of domestic transformations. Though rare and fleeting, they not only repeatedly alter the global hierarchy of powerful states but also create unique and powerful opportunities for sweeping national reforms—by triggering military impositions, swiftly changing the incentives of domestic actors, or transforming the basis of political legitimacy itself. As a result, the evolution of modern regimes cannot be fully understood without examining the consequences of clashes between great powers, which repeatedly—and often unsuccessfully—sought to cajole, inspire, and intimidate other states into joining their camps.

Rationalizing Politics: The Emerging Synthesis of International, American, and Comparative Politics

1998 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 759-786 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen V. Milner
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
International System ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Strategic Interactions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cross Fertilization ◽  
Separate Discipline

International relations has often been treated as a separate discipline distinct from the other major fields in political science, namely American and comparative politics. A main reason for this distinction has been the claim that politics in the international system is radically different from politics domestically. The degree of divergence between international relations (IR) and the rest of political science has waxed and waned over the years; however, in the past decade it seems to have lessened. This process has occurred mainly in the “rationalist research paradigm,” and there it has both substantive and methodological components. Scholars in this paradigm have increasingly appreciated that politics in the international realm is not so different from that internal to states, and vice versa. This rationalist institutionalist research agenda thus challenges two of the main assumptions in IR theory. Moreover, scholars across the three fields now tend to employ the same methods. The last decade has seen increasing cross-fertilization of the fields around the importance of institutional analysis. Such analysis implies a particular concern with the mechanisms of collective choice in situations of strategic interaction. Some of the new tools in American and comparative politics allow the complex, strategic interactions among domestic and international agents to be understood in a more systematic and cumulative way.

scholarly journals Political Theology and Secularization Theory in Germany, 1918–1939: Emanuel Hirsch as a Phenomenon of His Time

1987 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Stroup
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Secularization Theory ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Heavy Burden ◽  
Totalitarian Regimes

According to Goethe, “writing history is a way of getting the past off your back.” In the twentieth century, Protestant theology has a heavy burden on its back—the readiness of some of its most distinguished representatives to embrace totalitarian regimes, notably Adolf Hitler's “ThirdReich.” In this matter the historian's task is not to jettison but to ensure that the burden on Protestants is not too lightly cast aside—an easy temptation if we imagine that the theologians who turned to Hitler did so with the express desire of embracing a monster. On the contrary: they did so believing their choice was ethically correct. How could this come to pass in the homeland of the Reformation?

The Security Dilemma Revisited

1997 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles L. Glaser
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Significant Variation ◽  
International System ◽  
Security Dilemma ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
System States ◽  
High Level ◽  
Spiral Model ◽  
International Anarchy

Robert Jervis's article “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma” is among the most important works in international relations of the past few decades. In it, Jervis develops two essential arguments. First, he explains that the security dilemma is the key to understanding how in an anarchic international system states with fundamentally compatible goals still end up in competition and at war. The security dilemma exists when “many of the means by which a state tries1to increase its security decrease the security of others.” It provides the rational foundation for what Jervis termed the “spiral model,” which describes how the interaction between states that are seeking only security can fuel competition and strain political relations.2Second, Jervis explains that the magnitude and nature of the security dilemma depend on two variables: the offense-defense balance and offense-defense differentiation.3As a result, the security dilemma can vary across space and time. Although states exist in a condition of international anarchy that does not vary, there can be significant variation in the attractiveness of cooperative or competitive means, the prospects for achieving a high level of security, and the probability of war.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Youde
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
English School ◽  
Global Health Governance ◽  
Health Governance ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Generation

The conclusion ties together the various arguments made throughout the book to reinforce the overarching theoretical and narrative themes. First, it emphasizes how global health governance has emerged over the past generation to take its place as a secondary institution within international society. Second, it acknowledges the value in drawing on the English School of international relations theory for understanding the emergence, growth, and resilience of this institution. Third, it pushes English School theory to better incorporate international political economy and non-state actors into its theoretical framework. Finally, it uses these insights to forecast future directions in global health governance.

From Empire to Sovereignty—and Back?

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-262
Author(s):  
Jens Bartelson
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
Historical Contingency ◽  
European Context ◽  
The Past ◽  
And Function ◽  
Meaning And Function ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Sovereignty apparently never ceases to attract scholarly attention. Long gone are the days when its meaning was uncontested and its essential attributes could be safely taken for granted by international theorists. During the past decades international relations scholars have increasingly emphasized the historical contingency of sovereignty and the mutability of its corresponding institutions and practices, yet these accounts have been limited to the changing meaning and function of sovereignty within the international system. This focus has served to reinforce some of the most persistent myths about the origin of sovereignty, and has obscured questions about the diffusion of sovereignty outside the European context.

Political Theology and Social Ethics: The Socialist Humanism of Karl Barth

1974 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-305
Author(s):  
Joseph Bettis
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Generation ◽  
Dialectical Theology ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Intellectual Revolution ◽  
First World

Thirteen years ago Will Herberg described the work and influence of Karl Barth in the following way:Karl Barth is, beyond all doubt, the master theologian of our age. Wherever, in the past generation, men have reflected deeply on the ultimate problems of life and faith, they have done so in a way that bears the unmistakable mark of the intellectual revolution let loose by this Swiss thinker in the years immediately following the first world war…. If any man has ever put his sign on the thinking of his time, it is Karl Barth, the father of the ‘dialectical theology’.

Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth

2001 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Osiander
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International System ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
European System ◽  
350Th Anniversary

The 350th anniversary of the Peace of Westphalia in 1998 was largely ignored by the discipline of international relations (IR), despite the fact that it regards that event as the beginning of the international system with which it has traditionally dealt. By contrast, there has recently been much debate about whether the “Westphalian system” is about to end. This debate necessitates, or at least implies, historical comparisons. I contend that IR, unwittingly, in fact judges current trends against the backdrop of a past that is largely imaginary, a product of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century fixation on the concept of sovereignty. I discuss how what I call the ideology of sovereignty has hampered the development of IR theory. I suggest that the historical phenomena I analyze in this article—the Thirty Years' War and the 1648 peace treaties as well as the post–1648 Holy Roman Empire and the European system in which it was embedded—may help us to gain a better understanding of contemporary international politics.

scholarly journals International relations in the corona age: The concept of entropy revisited

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-57
Author(s):  
Vladimir Trapara
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Global Catastrophe ◽  
The Impact

The paper deals with the relation between the concept of entropy in international relations and the influence of the coronavirus pandemic upon them. In many ways, the coronavirus pandemic is an unprecedented event in contemporary history, but the corona age only confirms the already present trend of chaos and unpredictability in post-Cold War international relations, which Randall Schweller explained by the concept of entropy - the tendency of the rise in the disorder of every closed system. The goal of the paper is to consider this concept and revisit it by an assessment of how the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on international relations fits into it. Starting from Schweller?s observation that, in the past, hegemonic wars were the primary mechanism of containing entropy in the international system, along with his prediction that some natural catastrophe could have a certain impact in that direction in the future, the author departs with this research question: Could the coronavirus pandemic bring a reduction of entropy in the post-corona age, or will it only deepen the trend of entropy? Confirming the latter, the author finds the explanation for the resilience of entropy in the absence of balance of power in the contemporary international system - which is opposed to Schweller?s expectation that only hegemony can contain entropy. The conclusion is that the great powers in the post-corona age should consciously work on restoring and maintaining a balance of power if they want to make the system more resilient to some next global catastrophe.

scholarly journals Evolution and Internal Logic of Kyrgyzstan’s International Relations during the Period of Independence

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-202
Author(s):  
I. V. Podobed
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Central Government ◽  
International System ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Financial Assistance ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Internal Logic ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social

This article examines the position of Kyrgyzstan in the international system and its foreign policy in the context of the social fabric established after the collapse of the USSR, the dynamics of socio-economic development, as well as electoral processes and delimitation. The evolution of international relations in Kyrgyzstan is seen as a derivative of the socio-economic macro process that has been developing over the past three decades. In this article, the author attempts to combine the most common research optics that rarely intersect in one work: the study of the domestic political process and its role in setting foreign policy priorities. Due to the existence of an extensive clan system and the fragility of the central government, it is impossible to conduct internally consistent foreign policy. The foreign policy activity of Kyrgyzstan is aimed at maintaining a certain balance in relations with major actors in the region to create the most favourable conditions for labour migration, obtaining financial assistance and transit trade.

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