scholarly journals The study of the Middle East in the Journal International Problems between 1950 and 1990

2018 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-281
Author(s):  
Slobodan Jankovic

The paper analyses articles which deal with the Middle East politics, published in International Problems - a scientific journal of the Institute of International Politics and Economics, Belgrade. The author employs the method of content analysis to examine 12 research articles. The analysed articles are classified chronologically, by periods before and after 1956 when socialist Yugoslavia started the implementation of foreign policy based on the Non-Alignment principles (and eventually became one of the founding members of the Movement). That year also coincides more or less with the end of the Balkan Pact. The author particularly analyses ideological stances and tones used in texts, comparing them with the foreign policy of official Belgrade vis-a-vis Moscow and Washington. The author concludes that after the 1950s the revolutionary fervour was lost and the use of the Marxist framework in the analysis of the reality of international relations in the Middle East declined significantly.

Author(s):  
Valerie M. Hudson

This chapter traces the history and evolution of foreign policy analysis (FPA) as a subfield of international relations (IR) from its beginnings in the 1950s through its classical period until 1993. It begins with a discussion of three paradigmatic works that laid the foundation of FPA: Decision Making as an Approach to the Study of International Politics (1954), by Richard C. Snyder, H. W. Bruck, and Burton Sapin; ‘Pre-theories and Theories of Foreign Policy’ (1966), by James N. Rosenau; and Man–Milieu Relationship Hypotheses in the Context of International Politics (1956), by Harold and Margaret Sprout. These three works created three main threads of research in FPA: focusing on the decision making of small/large groups, comparative foreign policy, and psychological/sociological explanations of foreign policy. The chapter also reviews classic FPA scholarship during the period 1954–1993 and concludes with an assessment of contemporary FPA’s research agenda.


2005 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-360
Author(s):  
Arpad Abonyi ◽  
Ivan J. Sylvain ◽  
Brian W. Tomlin

This article depicts the configuration of approaches to the scientific study of foreign policy and international politics in Canada, as represented in a systematic survey of research written in Canada and published in forty scholarly journals, some from as early as 1945 up to 1975. Scientific studies found in this sample were analyzed along four dimensions : theoretical basis ; issue area ; units upon which the investigation is based ; and method of analysis. Scientific study of international relations emerged as a largely recent yet growing phenomenon of the last decade. It constitutes a unique subfield outside the mainstream of research, and is concentrated among a relatively small group of individuals and even fewer institutions. Études internationales emerged as the single most important channel of communication for this subfield in Canada


Author(s):  
Zikriya ◽  
Naushad Khan ◽  
Asif Salim

The development of International relations together with forces like globalization and technology has brought the world closer to each other. Friendly ties and relations with states create massive challenges during times of conflict. The focus of the paper is on the crisis evolving in the Middle East region and the role of Pakistan in solving those crisis considering relations with its closest allies, political and financial circumstances, and its foreign policy principles. A qualitative research approach with desk analysis technique has been applied to analyse the role of Pakistan as a mediator for the conflict resolution among Middle Eastern countries. The research highlights how the disputes created great problems for Pakistan but it is still striving to resolve conflicts among Middle Eastern countries because maintaining peace and prosperity in the Muslim world has always been a top priority of Pakistan’s foreign policy.


Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 196
Author(s):  
Ihab Shabana

British foreign policy in the Middle East has been well researched. However, there are still aspects of Britain’s approach towards the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) that have yet to be researched. One such aspect is Britain’s encounter with the rise of political Islam in MENA and the way(s) in which this phenomenon was deciphered. Even though political Islam dates back to the late 19th and early 20th century, our study focuses on the period between the turbulent years of the outburst of the Iranian Revolution in 1978–1979 and its widely-felt influence until 1990. Our methodological tools include Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) archival material that addresses the phenomenon of political Islam and its implications for British interests and international relations in general. We choose the concept of political Islam and its adherents that are widely acknowledged as political, comparatively to those of da’wa and Jihadi Islamism. We argue that British officials were widely influenced by the intellectual debates of the period under consideration and that they mainly adopted four analytical schemas which focused firstly on the rise of sectarian politics in MENA, secondly on the gradual accommodation of non-state actors and organizations in political analysis, thirdly on the worrisome prospect of an alliance between Islamist and communist forces, and lastly on the prevalence of the idea of Islamic solidarity and Islamic exceptionalism in exerting international politics. Our findings suggest that, at times, the FCO approaches the issue of political Islam with a reassuring mindset, focusing on its divisions and weaknesses, while at other times it analyzes it with a grave concern over stability and Britain’s critical interests.


Author(s):  
Stephen Benedict Dyson ◽  
Thomas Briggs

Political Science accounts of international politics downplay the role of political leaders, and a survey of major journals reveals that fewer than 3% of all articles focus on leaders. This is in stark contrast to public discourse about politics, where leadership influence over events is regarded as a given. This article suggests that, at a minimum, leaders occupy a space in fully specified chains of causality as the aggregators of material and ideational forces, and the transmitters of those forces into authoritative political action. Further, on occasion a more important role is played by the leader: as a crucial causal variable aggregating material and ideational energies in an idiosyncratic fashion and thereby shaping decisions and outcomes. The majority of the article is devoted to surveying the comparatively small literature on political leaders within International Relations scholarship. The article concludes by inviting our colleagues to be receptive to the idiosyncrasies, as well as the regularities, of statespersonship.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
May Darwich ◽  
Juliet Kaarbo

Research on international relations of the Middle East (IRME) has suffered from a schism between International Relations (IR) theory and regional particularities. To address this, scholars have offered corrective accounts by adding domestic factors to IR structural approaches. Studies on IRME thus reflect the turn to decision-making and domestic politics that has recently occurred. This article develops a critical analysis of the domestic politics orientation in IRME. We argue that this scholarship ignores work in foreign policy analysis (FPA) with its psychological-oriented and agent-based dimensions and that this constitutes a missed opportunity for the study of the region. The article offers suggestions for incorporating FPA research into IRME and argues that an FPA perspective offers an alternative and complementary approach to the eclectic frameworks predominant in the scholarship on IRME.


2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Adler-Nissen ◽  
Katrine Emilie Andersen ◽  
Lene Hansen

AbstractHow are images, emotions, and international politics connected? This article develops a theoretical framework contributing to visuality and emotions research in International Relations. Correcting the understanding that images cause particular emotional responses, this article claims that emotionally laden responses to images should be seen as performed in foreign policy discourses. We theorise images as objects of interpretation and contestation, and emotions as socially constituted rather than as individual ‘inner states’. Emotional bundling – the coupling of different emotions in discourse – helps constitute political subjectivities that both politicise and depoliticise. Through emotional bundling political leaders express their experiences of feelings shared by all humans, and simultaneously articulate themselves in authoritative and gendered subject positions such as ‘the father’. We illustrate the value of our framework by analysing the photographs of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian-Kurdish boy who drowned in September 2015. ‘Kurdi’ became an instant global icon of the Syrian refugee crisis. World leaders expressed their personal grief and determination to act, but within a year, policies adopted with direct reference to Kurdi's tragic death changed from an open-door approach to attempts to stop refugees from arriving. A discursive-performative approach opens up new avenues for research on visuality, emotionality, and world politics.


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