International Relations Theory

In this article, I draw on Judith Shklar to provide an alternative to the liberal model of military intervention proposed in the last few years by intellectuals such as Michael Ignatieff. I suggest that Ignatieff misunderstands Shklar's liberalism of fear when he appropriates it as a foundation for military intervention on behalf of human rights. Through a reading of his Tanner Lectures Human Rights as Politics. Human Rights as Idolatry on one hand, and drawing on Shklar's entire body of work on the other, I highlight the profound differences separating these authors with regard to: their stance on natural law; the question of foundations and moral universals; the question of voice (Who speaks on behalf of the op-pressed?); and their general stance with respect to the legacy of colonialism. I pit what I call Shklar's activism against Ignatieff's interventionism, and put forward a reading of «putting cruelty first» as opening a forum for contestation across nations and cultures.

Cyber conflict between states is a growing trend. There is a large body of research on cyber conflict, but there is very little quantitative analysis to support the theories or to assist in predicting future use of cyber operations. Using a logistic regression analysis, this thesis studies cyber conflicts between dyadic rivals from 2001 to 2011 to answer under what conditions cyber incidents occur between dyadic rivals in the past in the hopes to better analyze and predict future cyber incidents. The data demonstrate that the geographic proximity between dyads increases the probability of a cyber incident occurring while any or both of the dyads holds membership in NATO causes a decrease in the probability that cyber operations occur between dyadic rivals. The share of military personnel, military expenditure, and energy consumption is not enough to explain cyber incident trends. The results also show that many of my variables are conditional upon each other for their significance. It is imperative that states address the issues surrounding cyber conflict as the trend is increasing. At the present, the fear of retaliation will always be present as some argue that cyber defensive capabilities will never overtake cyber offensive capabilities as the latter is constantly transforming and evolving while the former is constantly playing “catch up.”

Úvod do studia politiky Miroslav Novák et al. Tato učebnice je určena zejména vysokoškolským studentům sociálních a humanitních věd bakalářského a magisterského stupně. Jde o práci kolektivní a svým pojetím i rozsahem v českém prostředí ojedinělou. Je rozdělena do čtyř částí. V první části je politika vykládána očima nejrůznějších disciplín-od politologie přes filosofii, psychologii, antropologii, právo, geografii a ekonomii až po his-torii. Obsahem druhé části jsou úvody do vybraných subdisciplín politické vědy, jako je komparativní politologie, teorie mezinárod-ních vztahů a správní věda. Ve třetí části jsou zpracovány úvody do kvantitativních a kvalitativních metod v politické vědě, včetně tzv. kvalitativní srovnávací analýzy. Čtvrtá část pak pojednává o někte-rých velkých tématech politiky, jako jsou stranické a volební systémy, národy a nacionalismus nebo demokracie a nedemokratické režimy. Učebnice tvoří vnitřně propojený celek, i když se názory, pojetí nebo hodnocení autorů jednotlivých kapitol od sebe mohou poněkud lišit.-Kdy vznikla politická věda?-Jaké další disciplíny se zabývají politikou?-Jaký je vztah mezi politickou vědou a politickou sociologií?-Proč se v češtině více ujal výraz "politologie" než "politická věda"?-Co je politika? Jaký je vztah mezi politikou a mocí?-Je řadový občan v politice kompetentní?-Jak nám analýza stranického systému pomáhá pochopit mo-derní politické režimy?-Co je předmětem komparativní politologie? Jaké metody pou-žívá?-V čem spočívá rozdíl mezi komparativní politologií a teorií mezi-národních vztahů?-Čím se vyznačuje dobrá veřejná správa? Rozsáhlý autorský tým pod vedením Miroslava Nováka tvoří čeští odborníci nejrůznějších generací z mnoha akademických pracovišť. vydání druhé, rozšířené a doplněné o 2 nové kapitoly.  Doporučená cena 749 Kč

Quantum social science is debated as an emerging field in international relations (IR) and, more broadly, the social sciences. Currently, no generally accepted criteria exist for mapping its borders. This article is an attempt to suggest a preliminary map of the field. It should be seen as an invitation for further dialogue on the relevance of the idea of quantum social science and its key themes.

The following four points outline the scope of this article. First, a number of highly diverse contributions to quantum social science can be suggested based on their common interest in interdisciplinary dialogue in the form of exchanges between the social sciences and a particular area in physics called quantum theory or quantum mechanics. Quantum physics, as opposed to other areas in the physical sciences, is of interest because the “new physics,” most closely associated with theoretical advances and discoveries in quantum physics, that emerged at the turn of the 20th century led to fundamental revisions of Newtonian assumptions. Further, various interpretations of quantum physics, especially the so-called Copenhagen Interpretation, call into question taken-for-granted ontological and epistemological assumptions regarding the nature of matter and the relation between the observer and the observed.

Second, the aims of those scholars that can be included under the label “quantum social science” differ substantially. A first group of scholars seeks to provide better models of complex social relations by applying the mathematical formalisms of quantum physics. A second group draws on quantum theory to rethink social relations and taken-for-granted concepts that are steeped in Newtonian assumptions. Areas of focus include forms of government and democracy, diplomacy, and security studies. Another group of scholars takes the “strange” implications of certain interpretations of quantum theory as a starting point to rethink social ontology and epistemology—ultimately offering novel approaches to social, agency, and agentic relations.

Third, various approaches in quantum social science grapple, explicitly or implicitly, with the relationship among their concepts, models, and theories and the world. From a philosophy of science perspective, quantum social science, much like the interpretations of quantum theory itself, faces a fundamental dividing line between realist and anti-realist approaches. Realist positions take the assumption that the social is quantum mechanical as the motivation to call for a fundamental rethinking of our social practices and approaches to, and theories of, the social. In contrast, instrumental accounts make use of mathematical formalisms, metaphors, and analogies, in order to offer more useful descriptions of the social without making ontological commitments.

Fourth, quantum social science inevitably raises questions of disciplinary boundaries and the status, scope, and methods of IR and the social sciences. Such debates are sometimes framed as a decision between the extreme poles of the “hard” sciences, on the one hand, and the humanities, on the other hand, with the social sciences occupying an uneasy middle position. Yet, other approaches explicitly reject this very binary. For those scholars who use quantum ideas to rethink social relations and agency, quantum social science harbors the potential for a whole new way of doing social science.

Situated within the wider post-secular turn in politics and international relations, this collection focuses not on religion per se, but rather explicitly on theology. Contributions to this volume highlight the political theological foundations of international theory and world politics, explicitly recasting theology and politics as symbiotic discourses with all the risks, promises and open questions this relation may involve. The overarching claim this volume makes is that all politics has theology embedded in it, both in the genealogical sense of carrying ineradicable traces of its theological origins, but also in the more ontological sense of being enacted by alternative configurations of the theologico-political. The book is unique in bringing together a diverse group of scholars, spanning knowledge areas as varied as IR, political theory, philosophy, theology, and history to investigate the complex interconnections between theology and world politics. It will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, international relations, intellectual history, and political theology.

On the History of Political Philosophy is a lively and lucid account of the major political theorists and philosophers of the ancient Greek, Roman, medieval, renaissance, and early modern periods. Topics include discussions concerning human nature, social justice, the origin of law and human rights, the rise and development of different forms of government, idealism and realism in international relations, the distinction between just and unjust war, and the sources of public authority and the nature of legitimate sovereignty. The organizing principle of the book is the idea that the great political thinkers were searching for the best political order and a criterion for human conduct in both domestic and international politics. Demonstrating the continued relevance of historical ideas to today's problems, the author traces ongoing discussions about politics by examining the ideas of key political theorists. The book is intended for use in courses on political philosophy or the history of political philosophy.
https://www.routledge.com/On-the-History-of-Political-Philosophy-Great-Political-Thinkers-from-Thucydides/Korab-Karpowicz/p/book/9780205119745

There are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life.

Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

“Power is war, the continuation of war by other means”: Foucault’s reversal of Clausewitz’s formula has become a staple of critical theory — but it remains highly problematic on a conceptual level. Elaborated during Foucault’s 1976 lectures (“Society Must Be Defended”), this work-hypothesis theorises “basic warfare” [la guerre fondamentale] as the teleological horizon of socio-political relations. Following Boulainvilliers, Foucault champions this polemological approach, conceived as a purely descriptive discourse on “real” politics and war, against the philosophico-juridical conceptuality attached to liberal society (Hobbes’s Leviathan being here the prime example).
However, in doing so, Foucault did not interrogate the conceptual validity of notions such as power and war, therefore interlinking them without questioning their ontological status. This problematic conflation was partly rectified in 1982, as Foucault proposed a more dynamic definition of power relations: “actions over potential actions”.
I argue, somewhat polemically, that Foucault’s hermeneutics of power still involves a teleological violence, dependent on a polemological representation of human relations as essentially instrumental: this resembles what Derrida names, in “Heidegger’s Ear”, an “anthropolemology”. However, I show that all conceptualisation of power implies its self-deconstruction. This self-deconstructive (or autoimmune) structure supposes an archi-originary unpower prior to power: power presupposes an excess within power, an excessive force, another violence making it both possible and impossible. There is something within power located “beyond the power principle” (Derrida). This (self-)excess signifies a limitless resistantiality co-extensive with power-relationality. It also allows the reversal of pólemos into its opposite, as unpower opens politics and warfare to the messianic call of a pre-political, pre-ontological disruption: the archi-originary force of différance. This force, unconditional, challenges Foucault’s conceptualisations of power, suggesting an originary performativity located before or beyond hermeneutics of power-knowledge, disrupting theoreticity as well as empiricity by pointing to their ontological complicity.
The bulk of this essay is dedicated to sketching the theoretical implications of this deconstructive reading of Foucault with respect to the methodology and conceptuality of political science and social theory.

The rough text, in English language, of the student seminar delivered at the Banja Luka Political Science Department - April 2013.
The seminar explains the key parameters of the US foreign policy in terms of a 'ritual identity' that's based on three narratives or narrative-frames
(the frames figure as frequently recurring, behavior-shaping cultural matrices):
1.  Power as a Divine Grace.
2.  Puritan narrative - a hero of  a 'promised/free land'
3.  'Pioneer' - a hero in a land of continually expanding and moving boundaries (Manifest Destiny)
The seminar illustrates such an analysis of US foreign political vocabulary with many examples from American self-descriptions (official talks, memoirs, diplomatic notes, presidential speeches....), and enumerates some key consequences of the thus explained identity in its foreign political projection.

The present monograph examines post-revolutionary Iran’s grand strategy by way of its adjustments at three key inflection points. The first spans the end of the Iran-Iraq war, the collapse of the bipolar order and the First Gulf War, along with internal structural changes following Ayatollah Khomeini’s death (1988-91). The second inflection point encompasses the events of 11 September and the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (2001-3). The third corresponds to the more recent Arab uprisings and the increasing internal and external pressures Iran faced over its nuclear program (2011-15).

Given the epistemic challenges inherent in any reckoning of intentions or ends, as opposed to capabilities or means, a strict focus on the notion of ‘grand strategic adjustments’ instead permits an empirically-grounded analysis of grand strategy as opposed to a more sweeping but potentially speculative reading. In examining these inflection points, the author adopts Neoclassical Realism as a theoretical framework to structure the narrative, furnishing a systematic account linking systemic pressures and incentives (independent variable), via domestic filters (intervening variables), to final outcomes or grand strategic adjustments (dependent variable). Given the prominence and predominance of ideas and the structure of rule in the Islamic Republic, the focus of domestic factors specifically falls on the ‘ideational-constitutive’ (national identity, regime ideology, status aspirations and state interests) and ‘institutional-competitive’ (elite interfactional bargaining) aspects.

The author concludes that while Iran’s leaders have over the decades proven the capacity to both reconcile ends and means, and identify and respond to grand strategic threats and opportunities, they have ultimately yet to transcend the vicious circle of self-manufactured challenges.

We live in an age of movement. More than at any other time in history , people and things move longer distances, more frequently, and faster than ever before. All that was solid melted into air long ago and is now in full circulation around the world like dandelion seeds adrift on turbulent winds. We find ourselves, in the early twenty-first century, in a world where every major domain of human activity has become increasingly defined by motion. 1 We have entered a new historical era defined in large part by movement and mobility and are now in need of a new historical on-tology appropriate to our time. The observation that the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first was marked by an increasingly " liquid " and " mobile modernity " is now something widely recognized in the scholarly literature at the turn of the century. 2 Today, however, our orientation to this event is quite different. Almost twenty years into the twenty-first century we now find ourselves situated on the other side of this heralded transition. The question that confronts us today is thus a new one: how to fold all that has melted back up into new solids. 3

Le Royaume ambitionne d’être reconnu comme une puissance africaine émergente dans son identité comme dans son espace de projection. Afin de satisfaire ces ambitions, l’appareil diplomatique se développe et se modernise, tandis qu’une identité de rôle singulière émerge autour de la notion de « juste milieu ». Cette étude présente, sur le plan empirique, les conditions de l’élaboration et de la conduite de cette politique africaine, et analyse, sur le plan théorique, l’évolution de l’identité de rôle marocaine à l'échelle internationale.

Classical geopolitical analysis comes to remind us that it is still present as a tool for decoding the interstate antagonisms as well as the global and the regional re-distributions of power. To be accurate , this never stopped happening; the post-Cold War 'neo-liberal vertigo' simply permitted many well-known fi gures of the greater academia to forget, to ignore and to doubt. The evolutions, during almost the last decade in the Greater Middle East, have made geopolitical analysis timelier than ever. The subsystem of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey is the operator of the geopolitical factor of the Islamist movement and, in these terms, it represents a main set of forces behind the pressures for redistribution of power and roles in the region. The current paper refers to the systemic geopolitical analysis to focus on Turkey's historical role in the Greater Middle East, its current ambitions and the mistakes having led its strategy to a stalemate. In this context, it is questioned which mistakes Turkey made, whether the overall neo-ottoman geostrategic policy recommendations are feasible and which elements of power are available for Turkey. Undoubtedly, power is the key towards an effective maximization of gains and a substantial increase of infl uence. For instance, Turkey's emphasis on the energy reserves of its greater region is still reasonable, while their nature itself underlines the worth of geopolitical analysis since it is identifi ed with the ontology of space and the intervening roles of group interests.

Rosalba Icaza proposes re-thinking IR by considering how modernity (as an international regime of knowledge) and coloniality (as an international regime of power) are mutually constitutive. Decolonizing IR, her contribution shows, would require a fundamental departure from Western epistemological paradigms such as the un-bodied rational choice actor, proceeding both from non-Euro-centric systems of thinking (i.e., Indigenous cosmologies) and different modes of knowing and being, such as the corpo-realities created through experiences of vulnerability. Following Maria Lugones, Icaza argues for ‘dwelling in the border,’ for ‘an emphasis on a knowing that sits in bodies and territories and its local histories in contrast to disembodied, abstract, universalist knowledge that generates global designs.’ Offering field notes from research trips along the Mexican migrant trail with her students, Icaza reflects on practical examples of such a decolonial approach to IR through the epistemologies of affect and the corporeal.

Resumen: Hegemonía y orden internacional hegemónico son ontologías clave para la disciplina y la teoría de las Relaciones Internacionales, y por ello, se trata de conceptos en permanente disputa académica. En un escenario mundial caracterizado por la crisis de la globalización, que puede interpretarse como crisis de hegemonía, vuelve a ser oportuna la revisión de estos conceptos. Este capítulo reexamina el concepto de hegemonía a partir tanto de las aproximaciones clásicas, como de una teorización crítica que se basa en la sociología histórica. Desde el concepto de hegemonía de Antonio Gramsci, se examina la aportación de la escuela neogramsciana de Relaciones Internacionales, que, frente a conceptos como primacía o polaridad, propone una visión estructural y socio-histórica de la hegemonía y de la globalización como un orden internacional hegemónico específico de esta etapa histórica. 

Abstract: Hegemony and international hegemonic order are key ontologies for both the discipline and the theory of International Relations, and therefore, these are concepts in permanent academic dispute. In a global scenario characterized by the crisis of globalization, which can be interpreted as a crisis of hegemony, the revision of these concepts is timely again. This chapter re-examines the concept of hegemony from both the classical approaches and critical theorizations based on historical sociology. Grounded on Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony, the contribution of the Neogramscian school of International Relations is examined, which, in the face of concepts such as primacy or polarity, proposes a structural and socio-historical vision of hegemony, and of globalization as a specific hegemonic international order in this historical stage.

Despite a growing interest in the role of emotions in world politics the relationship between emotion and securitization remains unclear.  The article argues persistent, if sporadic, references to fear and emotion in securitization studies represent ‘slips’ from an explicit ontology centred between the constitutive power of language and authority.  This slippage leaves securitization theory incoherent and narrows its empirical scope by excluding the emotional dispositions audiences rely upon to judge threat images.  This article offers a reconstruction of securitization theory where emotion, specifically collective fears, serve as the basis of an audience’s judgement for the practice of securitization.  Yet rather than simply accepting that fear facilitates securitizing moves the article draws on appraisal theory from psychology to demonstrates how collective fear appraisals are often fragile cultural constructs.  Limited by the symbolic resources of the local security imaginary and how agents contest these resources, the generation of collective fear appraisals is often constrained and with it the practice of securitization.  An empirical discussion of threat images in US foreign policy is used to explore these constraints.  The conclusion suggests the tendency for securitizing moves to be interpreted as comic underscores the precariousness of social practices seeking to elicit particular collective emotions.

This paper examines the idea that commercial law has the capacity to evolve spontaneously in the absence of a clear state authority because of its unique nature. I argue that the manner of interaction implied by commerce plays a crucial role in this ability as it involves a high degree of overall engagement. This I term “high engagement,” which I divide into two elements: repetition and the creation of clear cycles of interaction. Together they produce identifiable legal norms and subsequent compliance. Game theorists have long recognized the importance of repeated interaction in inducing cooperation; however, how the manner of commercial interaction itself facilitates this process has been left largely unexamined. Part I presents a brief overview of the concept of reciprocity and spontaneous law theory. In Part II, a more detailed explanation of the notion of high engagement is offered. Here I set out exactly how high engagement is instrumental in the emergence of legal norms. Finally, the paper concludes that the element of high engagement indeed plays a decisive role in commercial law’s ability to evolve and function in a decentralized, spontaneous fashion—an important insight in terms of the future international development of the modern law merchant as it emerges in the absence of a single legislative authority.

Resumen: El siglo XXI irrumpe con acontecimientos que modifican el ciclo del nuevo orden mundial. El Surgimiento  de numerosos agentes no estatales que detentan un poder significativo, modifica  constantemente el comportamiento de la actual sociedad internacional y evidencia que no existe un único centro de poder  universal. El presente artículo propone evidenciar  la emergencia de una nueva estructura del poder en el plano internacional, basada en  la no polaridad, un escenario que se  caracteriza esencialmente por el surgimiento de nuevos centros de poder global  y regional, inaugurando un escenario donde ningún Estado puede dirigir ni hegemonizar el sistema internacional.
Palabras clave: Orden mundial, soberanía, Globalización, Estado, Centros de Poder

Abstrac: The 21st century is filled with events that changed the order of the new world order. There was emergence of non-state agents which seized significant power. They continue to modify the behavior of today's international society and there is evidence that there is no universal central power. This article provides evidence of the emergence of a new structure of power in the international plane, based on non-polarity. It is a scenario which can be seen especially through the emergence of new centers of global and regional power, creating a scenario in which no states may operate or hegemonize the international system.

Key words: world order, sovereignty, globalization, state, power centers

While still fragmented, we are witnessing the emergence of a global commercial legal order independent of any one national legal system. This process is unfolding both on the macro-level of state actors as well as that of private individuals and organizations. On the macro-level, the sources of this legal order are complex international agreements; on the micro-level, private contracts employing commercial customary practices and arbitration are driving this process forward. Yet there is no comparable evolution occurring (in any substantial sense) in non-commercial areas of law such as criminal, tort, or family law. There is an overall asymmetry in the development of transnational legal order. But why is this happening? This paper argues that the emergence of a global commercial legal order may be partially attributed to the unique structural nature of trade. The paper gives a structuralist account, positing that unlike legal order of a non-commercial nature, commercial legal order has built-in mechanisms that make it particularly suited to evolve in a transnational context—i.e. to evolve and sustain itself in the absence of a central legislative or coercive authority. The paper identifies and explores these built-in mechanisms. The paper concludes that because commercial legal order is uniquely predisposed to emerge without the State, we should expect this asymmetry to not only continue, but likely grow even more extreme.

The best-selling introduction to international relations, offering the most comprehensive coverage of the key theories and global issues in world politics, written by the leading experts in the field.

Four brand new chapters including: Feminism, Race, International Organizations, and NGOs.

Among the deficiencies demonstrated by the world financial crisis of 2008–9, one was the limited capacity of G-8 to provide for global economic governance. The developed economies quickly realised that they should seek joint solutions and coordinated policies in cooperation with the leading emerging-market economies. As a result, the G-20 turned into the main forum for managing the crisis. This in fact pointed to an early institutional acknowledgement that important changes were underway in the global distribution of power. These changes derive from the substantially higher growth rates of the emerging-market economies in comparison with those of the developed economies, a trend named ‘the rise of the rest’ (Zakaria, 2008, pp. 2–3).

This Paper explores and summarises the Director's Duties of the UK Companies Act 2006 with emphasis on "the duty to promote the success of the company.

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Socio-economic structure of rural households in Sierra Leone, rural poverty,
approaches to rural development, theories and strategies of rural development,
development administration. Planning for rural development in rural Sierra Leone.
N.B. This outline summary should be read in conjunction with notes taken during
the lecture programme.

The act of gas flaring in Nigeria began with production of crude oil in 1958, and has since engendered serious trans-boundary environmental, energy, economic and health implications. This has led to the adoption of zero-gas flaring policy in 2003 in line with the domestication of related international initiatives and treaties in Nigeria. However, oil joint venture partnerships between Nigeria’s NNPC and international oil corporations (IOCs) from the United States of America, Britain, France and the Netherlands in oil production flared 514,779,616 standard cubic feet (scf) of associated gas out of 619,032,858 scf of total associated gas flared in 2011. Available records indicate that Nigeria’s oil joint venture partners prioritized profits through increase in oil production without relating oil production to the capacity of gas utilization facilities required to meet policy deadline. This study focused on the effects of oil joint venture partnerships on the enforcement of zero-gas flaring policy in Nigeria, 2003-2011. The specific objectives were to: (i) determine whether equity arrangements of the oil joint operation agreements hindered the implementation of zero-gas flaring policy in Nigeria, (ii) ascertain whether the budgeting process of the oil joint venture operations impeded the adoption of effective gas flare elimination strategies in Nigeria, and (iii) establish whether funding of NNPC’s participation in oil joint venture partnerships constrained financing of associated gas utilization facilities in Nigeria. The study adopted the rentier state theory as the theoretical framework and ex-post-facto research design. The study also made use of secondary data sourced from books, journals, conference papers and official documents from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the World Bank, Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership (GGFRP), the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The study used logical induction to analyze the data. The major findings were that: (i) the equity arrangements of the oil joint operation agreements hindered the implementation of zero-gas flaring policy in Nigeria, (ii) the budgeting process of the oil joint venture operators impeded the adoption of effective gas flare elimination strategies in Nigeria, and (iii) the inadequate funding of NNPC’s participation in oil joint venture partnerships constrained financing of associated gas flaring utilization facilities in Nigeria. The recommendations were: (i) restructuring the equity arrangements of the oil joint venture partners in order to effectively implement zero-gas flaring policy, (ii) reforming the budgeting process of the joint venture operators for adopting effective gas flaring elimination strategies, and (iii) sufficient funding of NNPC participation in the joint venture partnerships necessary for adequately financing associated gas utilization projects.

International Relations and Identity International Relations and Identity examines the issue of collective political identity formation and expands the concept of the international beyond the notion of states. Providing a dialogical approach to questions of identity and alterity in ...

Realism/Idealism are major rhetorical tropes of international relations. This paper attempts to generate a thicker specification of their meanings. Canonical international relations texts were searched for prototypic Realist and Idealist items. Expert coders evaluated the items for goodness of fit along Realist an Idealist dimensions. The items fell into four groups. Group 1, Realism but not Idealism, contained items that coders scored high on Realism and low on

Georgia, a small state in the South Caucasus, is the most ardent supporter of Euro-Atlantic integration in the entire post-Soviet region. Georgia’s possible membership in NATO looms large not only in terms of politics in the South Caucasus but increasingly in the tense relations between Russia and the West. In July 2018, NATO extended an official invitation to Macedonia, thereby processing its eighth enlargement. Zooming in on Georgia and Macedonia’s performance on membership requirements is a one-of-a-kind litmus test of perspectives of Georgia’s membership in NATO. The comparative analysis unveils that Georgia has outperformed Macedonia in all key areas of reforms and that NATO still pays more attention to geopolitical aspects of membership, rather compatibility with the Alliance’s requirements.

The United Nations is a crucial arena in which to set universal standards on women’s rights. But in recent meetings of the Commission on the Status of Women an increasingly coordinated misogynist backlash has been building unconventional alliances that transcend familiar geopolitical divisions and draw on the resources of religious organizations. States that have in the past been seen as defenders of women’s rights are losing ground in negotiations. There is a growing reluctance to expend political capital in defense of what has been constructed and maligned as a western social preoccupation. Transnational feminist networks have been deprived of opportunities to revive their networks and effectiveness in the absence of the expected fifth world conference on women this year. Feminist movements in emerging economies now have a crucial role to play in demonstrating that feminism is not limited to the West, and in influencing their national foreign policy establishments to defend women’s rights in multilateral agreements.