scholarly journals India at the WTO: Evolving Priorities, Unaltered Paradigm

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amit S. Ray ◽  
Sabyasachi Saha

India’s stance at the WTO has undergone a sea change since the beginning of the Uruguay Round. This paper attempts to trace the shifting coordinates of India’s position at the WTO. By focussing on three specific areas of negotiations, namely agriculture, services and TRIPS, the paper presents a theoretical analysis of how India’s stance at the WTO has evolved over time and whether it reflects any paradigm shift. In the light of international relations theory we argue that although the priorities and coordinates of India’s stance at the WTO have shifted over time, the underlying ‘neo-realist’ position adopted by India remains by and large unaltered. A postura da Índia na OMC passou por uma mudança radical desde o início da Rodada Uruguai. Este artigo tenta traçar as coordenadas de mudança de posição da Índia na OMC. Ao concentrar-se em três áreas específicas de negociações, ou seja, agricultura, serviços e TRIPS, o trabalho apresenta uma análise teórica de como a postura da Índia na OMC tem evoluído ao longo do tempo e reflete qualquer mudança de paradigma. À luz da teoria das relações internacionais que afirmam que, embora as prioridades e as coordenadas da posição da Índia na OMC têm mudado ao longo do tempo, a posição subjacente "neo-realista", aprovado pela Índia permanece em grande parte inalterada.

Author(s):  
Hugh Dyer

Changes in the environment can impact international relations theory, despite enjoying only a limited amount of attention from scholars of the discipline. The sorts of influence that may be identified include ontology, epistemology, concepts, and methods, all of these being related to varying perspectives on international relations. It is likely that the most profound implications arise at the ontological level, since this establishes assumptions about, for example, whether the world we wish to understand is both political and ecological. However, more recently the recognition of the practical challenge presented by the environment has become widespread, though it has not yet translated into a significant impact on the discipline of international relations, even when theoretical implications are noted. It is now almost obligatory to include the environment in any list of modern international relations concerns, as over time it has become necessary to include peace, underdevelopment, gender, or race, as they quite rightly became recognized as significant aspects of the field. Moreover, the environment, as a relatively novel subject matter, has naturally brought some critique and innovation to the field. However, studies of the environment are also subject to such descriptors as “mainstream” and “radical” in debates about how best to tackle the subject. As is often the case, the debates are sharpest among those with the greatest interest in the subject.


1998 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 324-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey T. Checkel

In recent years, constructivist thinking about global politics has brought a breath of fresh auto international relations. By exploring questions of identity and interest, constructivist scholars have articulated an important corrective to the methodological individualism and materialism that have come to dominate much of IR. As the books under review indicate, constructivism has also succeeded in demonstrating its empirical value—documenting a new and important causal role for norms and social structure in global politics. Theoretically, however, the approach remains underspecified. In particular, constructivists typically fail to explain the origins of such structures, how they change over time, how their effects vary cross nationally, or the mechanisms through which they constitute states and individuals. Missing is the substantive theory and attention to agency that will provide answers to such puzzles, as well as ensure the development of a productive research program.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 107
Author(s):  
Azwar Asrudin

This writing is the writer’s objections against Peter Van Ness’ claim on realist paradigm. In reference to Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm shift, Van Ness argued that realism, as what Kuhn would call “normal science” in international relations theory, is in a crisis because of its inability to explain some anomalies. According to Van Ness, rampant number of states doing security cooperation is enough to call realism is in a crisis as a paradigm. Through several cases on international anarchy, the writer argues that realism is still relevant and worthy to be called a paradigm in Kuhnian category.


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 125-152
Author(s):  
Michael Andrew Žmolek

Abstract Knafo and Teschke’s surprisingly polemical critique of Brenner’s work is derived from earlier work which applies the same critique arising out of the agency/structure debate in International Relations theory. Casting Brenner’s work as increasingly structuralist over time and therefore increasingly prone to reify social relations, thereby suppressing or downplaying the role of agency, Knafo and Teschke ask their readers to take such claims at face value, offering no close textual reading of Brenner’s work. Focusing almost entirely on method rather than on substance and by framing their critique within the confines of the unending debate over structure and agency, Knafo and Teschke’s claim that Brenner’s work consistently reifies social relations – presuming but not demonstrating that this is his intent – obscures and fails to engage substantively with his powerful historical contributions, or to offer alternative definitions or historical theories.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (14) ◽  
Author(s):  
Renato Somberg Pfeffer (IBMEC/MG)

Desde a década de 1980, o campo teórico das Relações Internacionais tem passado por uma crise profunda. Na nova sociedade da informação marcada pela globalização, o conceito fundamental das teorias tradicionais – a soberania do Estado – é desafiado. Em diálogo com outras áreas das Ciências Sociais e da Filosofia, a teoria das Relações Internacionais busca, então, refundar sua identidade. Essa refundação tem passado por uma reflexão crítica acerca de sua história e uma reavaliação de seus pressupostos. A defesa da emancipação humana passa a ser o mote orientador dessa nova tendência entre os críticos reflexivistas. Esse artigo busca resgatar algumas influências de outros campos do saber que estão na origem ao pensamento reflexivista.


Author(s):  
Matthew Kroenig

This chapter provides a summary introduction to the book. It explains the central question the book addresses and why it is important. Namely, it asks why academic nuclear deterrence theory maintains that nuclear superiority does not matter, but policymakers often behave as if it does. It then provides a brief explanation of the answer to this question: the superiority-brinkmanship synthesis theory. It discusses the implications of the argument for international relations theory and for US nuclear policy. In contrast to previous scholarship, the argument of this book provides the first coherent explanation for why nuclear superiority matters even if both sides possess a secure, second-strike capability. In so doing, it helps to resolve what may be the longest-standing, intractable, and important puzzle in the scholarly study of nuclear strategy. It concludes with a description of the plan for the rest of the book.


Author(s):  
David Boucher

Among philosophers and historians of political thought Hobbes has little or nothing to say about relations among states. For modern realists and representatives of the English School in contemporary international relations theory, however, caricatures of Hobbes abound. There is a tendency to take him too literally, referring to what is called the unmodified philosophical state of nature, ignoring what he has to say about both the modified state of nature and the historical pre-civil condition. They extrapolate from the predicament of the individual conclusions claimed to be pertinent to international relations, and on the whole find his conclusions unconvincing. It is demonstrated that there is a much more restrained and cautious Hobbes, consistent with his timid nature, in which he gives carefully weighed views on a variety of international issues, recommending moderation consistent with the duties of sovereignty.


Author(s):  
Leonard V. Smith

We have long known that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 “failed” in the sense that it did not prevent the outbreak of World War II. This book investigates not whether the conference succeeded or failed, but the historically specific international system it created. It explores the rules under which that system operated, and the kinds of states and empires that inhabited it. Deepening the dialogue between history and international relations theory makes it possible to think about sovereignty at the conference in new ways. Sovereignty in 1919 was about remaking “the world”—not just determining of answers demarcating the international system, but also the questions. Most histories of the Paris Peace Conference stop with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on June 28, 1919. This book considers all five treaties produced by the conference as well as the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey in 1923. It is organized not chronologically or geographically, but according to specific problems of sovereignty. A peace based on “justice” produced a criminalized Great Power in Germany, and a template problematically applied in the other treaties. The conference as sovereign sought to “unmix” lands and peoples in the defeated multinational empires by drawing boundaries and defining ethnicities. It sought less to oppose revolution than to instrumentalize it. The League of Nations, so often taken as the supreme symbol of the conference’s failure, is better considered as a continuation of the laboratory of sovereignty established in Paris.


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