{"title":"Exercising status recognition sensibility: the empathic de-escalation of the Sino-Indian 1998 status dilemma","authors":"Chiara Cervasio","doi":"10.1177/00471178231186270","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178231186270","url":null,"abstract":"Uncertain processes of status recognition might generate status dilemmas in world politics. While existing accounts are limited to the fatalist assumption that status dilemmas inevitably lead to dangerous international conflicts, I argue that status dilemma dynamics can be mitigated if one or both sides in a dyad are able to exercise a form of empathy that I call ‘status recognition sensibility’. This is the capacity and intention to understand that the actions of the adversary might be driven by erroneous perceptions of status misrecognition and to reassure them that their status is not under threat. The article investigates the case study of Sino-Indian competition in the aftermath of the 1998 Indian nuclear tests, where each side perceived the other to be challenging its claim to great power status. It concludes that the status recognition sensibility was key for ensuring diplomatic rapprochement and de-escalate tensions between the two countries.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"646 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76832304","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reconstructing neoclassical realism: a transitive approach","authors":"Panos Vasileiadis","doi":"10.1177/00471178231185747","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178231185747","url":null,"abstract":"Neoclassical Realism’s (NCR) theoretical relevance is on the line. The structural realist variant of the paradigm, tasked to explain why states react inefficiently to systemic stimuli is threatened with triviality by being assigned to explain a few cases of deviance. This is given the usual lack of ability on the part of those stimuli to point to a single optimal state response. In acknowledgement of the permissiveness of systemic stimuli, a second generation of NCR scholarship has proposed the development of a general theory of explaining foreign policy as the joint result of the limits imposed by them and the function of non-systemic factors – ideas and domestic politics – in selecting outcomes from within those limits. But this endeavour has been charged with the ‘crime’ of striping NCR of its theoretical distinctiveness, based on the argument that both types of causes are prima facie symmetrical. Accepting the view that NCR faces such an impasse, this article points towards a third pathway, termed transitive NCR. What is proposed under the latter is the longitudinal study of policy trends and patterns as the outcome of the transitive interplay between systemic and non-systemic factors; that is, the careful study of the ways in which systemic factors activate a number of non-systemic causal mechanisms, leading to the explained trends and patterns. In this way, the paradigm acquires distinctiveness and sufficient explanatory breadth while building bridges with other paradigms committed to the multicausal study of long-time periods.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"53 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86751660","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A theory’s time perspectives: contributing to a theory’s inadequacy","authors":"C. Wheeler","doi":"10.1177/00471178231185669","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178231185669","url":null,"abstract":"Theories can either have something to say about the future or provide foundations for making judgments about the future. In either case, however, a theory remains inadequate for obtaining insights about the future which no amount of advancements in information access and quality or methodologies can overcome. This article suggests that inadequacy persists and cannot be completely overcome because of the long-term and short-term time perspectives embedded within a theory. Using illustrative examples of time perspectives from Morgenthau’s theory of international politics, this article illustrates and analyses how long-term and short-term time perspectives within a theory delimit claims or judgments about the future made within or derived from a theory. Subsequently, readers gain insights on how to conceptualise long-term and short-term time perspectives, methods for identifying and differentiating between time perspectives within a theory and the distinct work time perspectives perform within a theory when multiple time perspectives are present.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"306 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89047746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Invitation games and the politics of joining US-led coalition warfare: a small state perspective","authors":"Rasmus Pedersen, Yf Reykers","doi":"10.1177/00471178231166562","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178231166562","url":null,"abstract":"How do status-seeking governments in small states mobilize parliamentary support for participation in US-led warfare coalitions? We argue that the formulation of official invitations by the United States plays an overlooked instrumental role in the domestic ratification game. Invitations can be a strategic tool for governments confronted with divided parliaments to secure support for contributions close to their position. Building on a modified and reversed version of Schelling’s tying hands strategy, we develop a novel invitation game to explain dynamics in the two-level game between coalition leader, government and parliament where governments tie their hands internationally rather than domestically. By signalling their intentions and strategic commitments to the coalition leader, small state governments can seek to influence the content of the coalition leader’s invitation, which they in turn can present as a take-it-or-leave-it offer to parliament. In this way, governments can raise the perceived abandonment costs to a level that outweighs parliament’s fear of entrapment, making the latter more willing to support a forceful commitment. We illustrate the plausibility of this invitation game model with empirics from Denmark’s past contributions to US-led coalitions, which show that the domestic value of these US invitations has so far been underestimated, even in a case where there exists a strong Atlantic security predisposition. In this way, this paper not only raises attention to the importance of studying how small states decide on costly military contributions, it also shows that understanding domestic contestation of military deployments requires taking into account the strategic importance of international signals.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"79 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90618266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Is someone’s mercenary another’s contractor? American, British, and Russian private security companies in US and UK parliamentary debates","authors":"M. Casiraghi, E. Cusumano","doi":"10.1177/00471178231159587","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178231159587","url":null,"abstract":"Scholars disagree on whether an anti-mercenary norm exists, whether today’s private military and security companies (PMSCs) fall under its scope, and whether the privatization of security erode parliamentary control over the use of force. We contribute to these debates by conducting a content analysis of parliamentary debates on PMSCs in the UK and US (2001–2019). Our results show that American and British politicians engage in a vehement, bipartisan criticism of Russian PMSCs, whose employees are consistently stigmatized as ruthless mercenaries irrespective of the activities they perform. Criticism of their own government’s use of PMSCs, by contrast, is more nuanced and largely made by liberal and social democratic politicians only. These findings support the argument that an anti-mercenary norm narrowly focused on for-profit providers of combat still exists, but also highlights that its interpretation is biased by nationalism and politico-economic preferences, which shape the frequency and nature of politicians’ stigmatization of private security providers","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80138904","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review essay: the nuclear curse","authors":"R. Lebow","doi":"10.1177/00471178221094726","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221094726","url":null,"abstract":"The five books under review address nuclear weapons and the risk of war during the Cold War. Four of the five contend this risk was higher than understood by policymakers at the time or many scholars in its aftermath. They attribute this risk to strategic alerts, close encounters of opposing forces in crisis, and lack of access to critical intelligence. They consider the superpowers to have emerged unscathed from the Cuban missile crisis as much due to luck as leader commitments to avoid war. I interrogate the concept of “luck” and use my analysis to evaluate these arguments.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"17 1","pages":"180 - 198"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73000260","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Strength born of weakness: the advantages of open maritime polities in multipolar international systems","authors":"Mihai Murariu, George Anglițoiu","doi":"10.1177/00471178231157148","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178231157148","url":null,"abstract":"This paper focuses on open maritime polities and their competitive advantages in multipolar international systems. Firstly, the paper explores the various understandings of seapower and its possible impact in international relations, while also drawing attention to its non-military dimensions. Secondly, the paper considers the factors which affect the emergence of open maritime polities and the sustainability of their seapower. It argues that the origins of such polities can be found in their overall weakness and the opportunities provided by the sea in a multipolar international system, which, in turn, strengthens the autonomous groups that can make sustainable seapower possible to begin with. Thirdly, the dynamism and advantages of such polities in multipolar international systems are portrayed. The text focuses on medieval and early modern Venice and Genoa, including their varied strategies in using seapower in order to survive and add competitive advantages to their participation in Mediterranean-centric, multipolar international systems. The weakness which made possible the emergence of these polities fundamentally encouraged or enabled their open nature, adaptability and their agency within multipolarity. This represents a step in future research on what is arguably a mutually reinforcing connection between seapower, open societies and competitive advantages in multipolar systems.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73611648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Trumpism and the rejection of global climate governance","authors":"Aaron Ettinger, A. Collins","doi":"10.1177/00471178231153555","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178231153555","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explains the ideational foundations of Donald Trump’s rejection of global climate cooperation and its implications for the future of global climate governance. We argue that Trumpism’s antipathy is a fundamental normative challenge to the key ideas that underpin global climate cooperation. Here we explore two specific norm contestations: (1) Collective action versus extralegal sovereignty, and (2) Common but Differentiated Responsibility versus fairness-as-reciprocity. Trump’s aggressive norm rejections are quite novel. His rejection of climate politics in particular and his desire to return to a status quo ante in world politics, positions him as a distinct type of actor in the spectrum of norm contestation – a reactionary norm entrepreneur. We contribute an ideational explanation of Trumpism’s rejection of global climate cooperation by identifying the fundamental clash of ideas and his role as a reactionary norm entrepreneur within the broader framework of global climate governance. It offers a case study in a high-profile instance of norm contestation and its implications for the survival of the global climate change regime.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74120018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Comparing Chinese and EU trade agreement strategies: lessons for normative power Europe?","authors":"M. Sampson, T. Theuns","doi":"10.1177/00471178231153554","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178231153554","url":null,"abstract":"This article compares the EU and China’s approaches to negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs). We show how China’s approach is more gradualist with regards to coverage of issues, and argue that this gives China advantages, which it leverages in later deals. While there are important differences in the scope and approach of EU trade negotiations, we argue that the EU could gain similar advantages by incorporating more Chinese-style gradualism to how it negotiates FTAs. Paradoxically, we argue that mirroring Chinese strategy in this regard could be used by the EU to secure very different ends from China’s such as normative reforms in the areas of human rights, the rule of law, and democratic government. More gradualism would allow the EU to scale up trade cooperation and regulatory convergence in an incremental manner while autocratic partner countries make democratic reforms, and would also enlarge the scope of more coherent positive conditionality.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"52 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73326994","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Parliamentarizing war: explaining legislative votes on Canadian military deployments","authors":"Philippe Lagassé, Justin Massie","doi":"10.1177/00471178231151904","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178231151904","url":null,"abstract":"The parliamentarization of military deployments is a burgeoning area of study but has tended to neglect the peculiar cases of legislatures deprived of any war powers. This article contributes to this literature by examining the curious case of Canada. Since Canadian governments are not required to secure parliamentary support to deploy the military, it analyzes why they occasionally have and increasingly do. We propose and test four hypotheses to explain why and when governments willingly choose to involve parliament in war decisions absent constitutional or legal obligation to do so: executive ideology, mission risk, minority parliament, and blame shifting. Our findings suggest that ideology and mission risk have the strongest explanatory and predictive power for when the executive will invite the legislature to vote on a military deployment in Canada. While the desire to avoid blame may contribute to the decision to hold a vote, this is not as influential or statistically relevant. The association between holding a vote and being in a minority parliament, for its part, is negligible and statistically insignificant.","PeriodicalId":47031,"journal":{"name":"International Relations","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75513393","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}