International Relations Theory

Contesting Internet Governance: Global Dissent and Disparities in the Management of Cyberspace Resources

by David Drissel

Deliberation and Global Civil Society: Agency Arena Affect

by james brassett

The article provides a critical analysis of the role and function of global civil society within deliberative... more The article provides a critical analysis of the role and function of global civil society within deliberative approaches to global governance. It critiques a common view that global civil society can/should act as an agent for democratising global governance and seeks to explore the importance of global civil society as an arena of deliberation. This more reconstructive aim is supplemented by an empirically focused discussion of the affective dimensions of global civil society, in general, and the increasingly important use of film, in particular. Ultimately, this then yields an image of the deliberative politics of global civil
society that is more reflective of the differences, ambiguities and contests that pervade its discourses about global governance. This is presented as a quality that debates about deliberative global governance might learn from as well as speak to.

Misyurov D.A. Dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas // Credo New. 2012. №2

by Dmitry Misyurov

The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with... more The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with dominant and the non-dominant elements; universal formula; formula with symbolic weight of elements; tautological formula. For example, it suggests an opportunity to use the dialectical formulas for modeling and artificial intelligence creation, etc.

Uluslararası İlişkilerde İngiliz Okulu Kuramı: Kökenleri, Kavramları ve Tartışmaları

by Uluslararası İlişkiler

Balkan Devlen, Özgür Özdamar, "Uluslararası İlişkilerde İngiliz Okulu Kuramı: Kökenleri, Kavramları ve Tartışmaları", Uluslararası İlişkiler, Cilt 7, Sayı 25 (Bahar), 2010

Bu makale uluslararası ilişkilere kuramsal yaklaşımlardan biri olan İngiliz Okulu’nu tanıtmayı ve değerlendirmeyi... more Bu makale uluslararası ilişkilere kuramsal yaklaşımlardan biri olan İngiliz Okulu’nu tanıtmayı ve değerlendirmeyi amaçlamaktadır. İngiliz Okulu’nun ne olduğunu anlatmak için, öncelikle Okul’un kökleri, kurucuları, ontolojik ve yöntembilimsel duruşu tanıtılmış ve tartışılmıştır. Daha sonra Okul’un özünü oluşturan temel argümanlar belirlenmiş ve kurucularının tartıştıkları önemli sorular ele alınmıştır. Makalenin ikinci bölümünde ise, Okulun ikinci nesli diyebileceğimiz kuramcıların ürettikleri normatif ve yapısalcı eserlere ve tartışmalara yer verilmiştir. Sonuç olarak makale Okulun hem normatif hem de analitik analizlere imkân sağladığı için bir ‘büyük kuram’ potansiyeline sahip olduğunu iddia etmektedir.

Eleştirel Gerçekçilik: Uluslararası İlişkiler Kuramında Post-Pozitivizm Sonrası Aşama

by Uluslararası İlişkiler

Faruk Yalvaç, " Eleştirel Gerçekçilik: Uluslararası İlişkiler Kuramında Post-Pozitivizm Sonrası Aşama ", Uluslararası İlişkiler, Cilt 6, Sayı 24 (Kış), 2009

Eleştirel gerçekçilik Uluslararası İlişkiler kuramının gündemine artan bir şekilde yerleşen bir bilim felsefesidir.... more Eleştirel gerçekçilik Uluslararası İlişkiler kuramının gündemine artan bir şekilde yerleşen bir bilim felsefesidir. Uluslararası İlişkiler kuramı açısından en önemli özelliği uluslarası ilişkilerin incelenmesinde odak noktasını epistemolojiden ontolojiye kaydırmasıdır. Eleştirel gerçekçiliğin materyalist ontolojisine göre kişilerin gözlem ve duyumlarından bağımsız bir gerçek vardır. Bu, gerçeği gözlemlenebilen olgularla sınırlayan pozitivist bilim anlayışına olduğu kadar gerçeğin dilsel ya da söylemsel olduğunu ileri süren post-pozitivist yaklaşımlara da alternatif bir bilim felsefesidir. Eleştirel gerçekçilik uluslararası ilişkileri farklı ontolojik derinliği olan bir toplumsal ilişkiler bütününün parçası olarak görmekte, uluslararası yapıları toplumsal ilişkiler açısından tanımlamakta, yapı ile yapıyı oluşturan birimler arasındaki ilişkiyi dönüşümsel bir toplumsal eylem modeli etrafında geliştirerek hem iradeciliğin hem de yeni-gerçekçi yapısalcılığın tek yanlı determinizmine alternatif bir yaklaşımın ilkelerini sunmaktadır.

Introduction to the Political Economy of the Sub-prime Crisis in Britain: Constructing and Contesting Competence

by james brassett

Performing the Sub-Prime Crisis: Trauma and the Financial Event

by james brassett

The article provides a critical analysis of the performative effects of invocations of trauma and traumatic imagery... more The article provides a critical analysis of the performative effects of invocations of trauma and traumatic imagery during the sub-prime crisis. We develop a pragmatic approach to performativity that foregrounds the ambiguity between the importance of performative utterances, on the one hand, and overlapping performativities that produce subjects capable of ‘‘hearing’’ such utterances, on the other. We argue that a performative effect of the traumatic narrative of the sub-prime crisis was to constitute it as ‘‘an event’’ with traumatic characteristics. Financial subjects came to anticipate the object of financial salvation through intervention to save the banks; and such a view worked to curtail the range of political possibilities that were thinkable. Lines of pragmatic resistance are suggested, which turn the logic of trauma toward broadly progressive ends. In this way, the political dimension of performativity is brought forward: if finance is performative, then this only invites the question of how we might perform it differently.

Crisis Is Governance: Sub-Prime, the Traumatic Event, and Bare Life

by james brassett

co-authored with Nick Vaughan-Williams

This article provides a critical analysis of how discourses of trauma and the traumatic event constituted the... more This article provides a critical analysis of how discourses of trauma and the traumatic event constituted the ethico-political possibilities and limits of the sub-prime crisis. Metaphors of a “financial tsunami” and pervasive media focus on emotional “responses” such as fear, anger and blame constituted the sub-prime crisis as a singular, traumatic “event” demanding particular (humanitarian) responses. Drawing upon the work of Giorgio Agamben, we render this constituted logic of event and response in terms of the securing of sovereign power and the concomitant production of bare life; the savers and homeowners who became “helpless victims” in need of rescue. Using Agamben’s recent arguments about “the apparatus” and processes of subjectification and de-subjectification, we illustrate this theoretical approach by addressing the position of the British economy, bankers and homeowners. On this view, it was the movement between subject positions—from safe to vulnerable, from entrepreneurial to greedy, from victim to survivor—that marked out the effective manner of governance during the sub-prime crisis. In the process sovereign categories of financial citizenship, asset based welfare and securitisation (which many would posit as the very problem) were confirmed as central to our future “survival”. In short, (the way that the) crisis (was constituted) is governance.

The Politics of Legitimate Global Governance

by james brassett

Legitimacy is an important question to ask of the theory and practice of global governance. In this introduction, we... more Legitimacy is an important question to ask of the theory and practice of global governance. In this introduction, we make two propositions that are used to push thinking about these issues forward. Firstly, in analytical terms we outline a spectrum between legitimacy and legitimization which is aimed to capture the diverse set of approaches to this subject and to develop an engaged and reformist attitude that refuses the either-or distinction in favour of a methodologically pluralist logic of ‘both and’. Secondly, in political terms, we argue that discussions of legitimate global governance in both policy and academic circles can carry a ‘Trojan horse’ quality whereby the ambiguity of the term might allow a point of intervention for more ambitious
ethical objectives.

International Political Economy and the Question of Ethics

by james brassett

The article provides a critical analysis of how IPE might engage with the question of ethics. After reviewing existing... more The article provides a critical analysis of how IPE might engage with the question of ethics. After reviewing existing calls to bring ethics and ethical considerations within the mainstream of the discipline several questions are made. Drawing from critical and post-structural thought, it is argued that existing accounts of ethics privilege a problematic separation between ethics and power. Power is depicted as obligation – as power over – while
ethics is depicted as an ameliorative other to power. We draw out several limits in this separation – including the reification of market subjectivities of contract, individualism, and a problematic global scale – arguing that ethics should be seen as a constitutive discourse like any other. Power is re-phrased as productive, as the power to. We conclude by articulating a pragmatist research agenda that seeks to foster the kernel ‘possibility’ in discourses of ethics while retaining sensitivity to the potential constitutive ‘violence’ of ethics. Given this dilemma, we argue that ongoing practices of ‘resistance’ – in both practical and scholarly senses – should be a central problematic for engaging with the (political) question of ethics in IPE.

British irony, global justice: a pragmatic reading of Chris Brown, Banksy and Ricky Gervais

by james brassett

The article provides a critical analysis of the concept of irony and how it relates to global justice. Taking Richard... more The article provides a critical analysis of the concept of irony and how it relates to global justice. Taking Richard Rorty as a lead, it is suggested that irony can foreground a sense of doubt over our own most heartfelt beliefs regarding justice. This provides at least one ideal sense in which irony can impact the discussion of global ethics by pitching less as a discourse of grand universals and more as a set of hopeful narratives about how to reduce suffering. The article then extends this notion via the particular – and particularly – ethnocentric case of British Irony. Accepting certain difficulties with any definition of British Irony the article reads the interventions of three protagonists on the subject of global justice – Chris Brown, Banksy and Ricky Gervais. It is argued that their considerations bring to light important nuances in irony relating to the importance of playfulness, tragedy, pain, self-criticism and paradox. The position is then qualified against the (opposing) critiques that irony is either too radical, or, too
conservative a quality to make a meaningful impact on the discussion of global justice. Ultimately, irony is defended as a critical and imaginative form, which can (but does not necessarily) foster a greater awareness of the possibilities and limits for thinking/doing global justice.

Building the normative dimension (s) of a global polity

by james brassett

Deliberation and Global Governance: Liberal, Cosmopolitan, and Critical Perspectives

by james brassett

Talking to Each Other: city-to-city interactions between New Zealand and China, and their impact on world affairs.

by Chris Lipscombe

Submitted for a Master in International Relations degree 31 March 2008

Cities are fundamental to human society. Yet states and state-makers continue to hog the limelight on the world stage,... more Cities are fundamental to human society. Yet states and state-makers continue to hog the limelight on the world stage, while cities and their citizens (city-zens) are ignored or restricted to playing historical supporting roles. A sharpening of focus on the strategic role of cities in world affairs, with specific reference to relationships between cities in New Zealand and China, has implications for international relations actors in New Zealand, as understood through a range of analytic frameworks. Using evidence from sister-city contacts between politicians, policy-makers, businesspeople and citizens of New Zealand and their Chinese counterparts, city-to-city interactions are currently seen to be taking place within state-imposed government and policy frameworks, although interactions at a business and citizen level may be laying the foundation for trans-national political communities with New Zealand and Chinese characteristics.

Between knowledge and power: epistemic communities and the emergence of security sector reform in the EU security architecture

by Giovanni Faleg

published in European Security (Routledge), 2012

This article provides a theoretically informed analysis to understand why and how security sector reform (SSR) norms... more This article provides a theoretically informed analysis to understand why and how security sector reform (SSR) norms have been integrated into the European Union (EU) security architecture. It investigates the role of epistemic communities in advancing the security-development/good governance agenda underpinning SSR and in fostering institutional learning. Shared knowledge and expertise have driven policy and institutional change, since they yielded a new policy consensus that transformed the EU's approach to security in the post-cold war international system. Empirical findings, based on content analysis and on 25+ semi-structured interviews, suggest that transnational expertise-based networks did play a leading role in shaping SSR conceptual development. However, they also show that cleavages between epistemic communities across the security/development dividing line are ultimately responsible for the EU's failure to achieve a coherent SSR policy implementation. Moreover, the article concludes that the institutionalisation of SSR in the EU did not originate in a single norm setter, nor in sheer ideational stimulus. Change occurred through the complex interplay between ideas and interests, that is between knowledge and power, leading specific norms to be visualised as consensual and dominant.

Feliu, L. (2007), « La política exterior y la promoción de los derechos humanos y la democracia. Una aproximación desde la teoría de las Relaciones Internacionales », en Derechos humanos y conflictos internacionales. Cursos de Derecho Internacional y Relaciones Internacionales de Vitoria-Gasteiz 2006. Bilbao : Universidad del País Vasco, pp. 81 - 120

by Laura Feliu i Martinez

En el presente artículo se revisa la literatura académica que desde la disciplina de las Relaciones Internacionales ha... more En el presente artículo se revisa la literatura académica que desde la disciplina de las Relaciones Internacionales ha abordado la temática de la promoción por los Estados de los derechos humanos y la democracia más allá de sus fronteras, enmarcada en la cuestión más general de la relación entre ética y Relaciones Internacionales.

Andare oltre Giano: la terza fronte della diplomazia romana in Grecia e Oriente (II a.C.),

by Claudio Vacanti

in Guerra e diplomazia nel mondo antico. Tra istanze politiche e strategie culturali, Atti del Convegno di Studi (Palermo 21- 22 novembre 2008), Hormos
(n.s. 1) 2008/2009, pp. 212-219

Guerra preventiva, equilibrio di potenza e imperialismo romano

by Claudio Vacanti

Thalassa (2), 2005, pp. 161-174

Suasione latente e uso della forza nell’espansione romana (II a.C.)

by Claudio Vacanti

in Violenza e consenso nel mondo antico, Atti della Giornata di Studi (Palermo 10 marzo 2006), in Hormos (8) 2006, pp. 115-122

What symbols

by Dmitry Misyurov

This article contains 12 questions about the symbols. What are your thoughts in response? This article contains 12 questions about the symbols. What are your thoughts in response?