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| 1 |
ID:
145116
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| Summary/Abstract |
This Presidential Issue, with contributions by scholars from Asia, Australia, the Middle East, South America, Africa, Europe, and the United States, illustrates how the idea of Global international relations (IR) could serve as a framework for both scholarly debate and empirical research and analysis. This issue is divided into two main parts. The first part contains nine feature articles that illustrate the multiple dimensions of a Global IR research agenda, overall demonstrating how bringing in non-Western ideas and agency broadens the horizons of existing IR knowledge. The topics covered here include Chinese conceptions of “relationality;” colonial interactions in the Indian Ocean to diffuse Westphalian sovereignty through processes of localization, comparing regionalisms, and norm dynamics in Asia and Europe; and the contribution of intercivilizational dialogues in bridging the West-Rest divide. Together, these articles challenge dominant understandings of these issues in current IR theory and highlight the place and agency of non-Western societies in the global order. The second part of the Presidential Issue, the Forum Section, contains ten short contributions that were drawn from two Presidential Theme Panels at the ISA 2015 Convention in New Orleans. These Forum essays not only highlight the obstacles facing the realization of Global IR, including some traditionalist objections to the whole idea, but also offer some pathways to overcome them. Overall, the Presidential Issue suggests that a Global IR is both possible and desirable.
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| 2 |
ID:
167663
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| Summary/Abstract |
Scholars of international relations (IR) from the United States, like any country, view the world with particular perspectives and beliefs that shape their perceptions, judgments, and worldviews. These perspectives have the potential to affect the answers to a host of important questions—in part by shaping the questions that get asked in the first place. All scholars are potentially affected by national bias, but American bias matters more than others. This special issue focuses on two issues: attention and accuracy in IR research. While previous scholarship has raised principally normative or theoretical concerns about American dominance in IR, our work is heavily empirical and engages directly with the field's mainstream neopositivist approach. The collected articles provide specific, fine-grained examples of how American perspectives matter for IR, using evidence from survey experiments, quantitative datasets, and more. Our evidence suggests that American perspectives, left unexamined, negatively affect our field's research. Still, the essays in this special issue remain bullish about the field's neopositivist project overall. We also offer concrete steps for taking on the problems we identify, and improving our field's scholarship.
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| 3 |
ID:
155153
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| Summary/Abstract |
Andrew Linklater’s Violence and Civilization in the Western States-System is to be both praised and critiqued for opening spaces for discussing civilisational standards in the era of a globalising world. It offers a healthy provocation for inquiry into how non-Western states ought to comprehend the legacies of Western political evolution colouring existing ‘IR’ as a discipline. Linklater’s book inspires three thematic reactions: globalisation does bring harm; the notion of a universal civilisation remains open to debate; and the possibilities of civilising patterns in premodern Southeast Asia serving as supplementary mirrors and extensions of the relationship between violence and civilisation. It is suggested that Linklater’s sequel must consider the trajectory of non-Western sociologies of IR.
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| 4 |
ID:
178550
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| Summary/Abstract |
The idea of liberal international order as a world order is understood to be constituted as a result of disproportionate Anglo-American influences. This is in line with much of international relations (IR) theory, which typically characterizes the emergence of order as resulting from the diffusion or imposition of norms and institutions from the world's centers of power. This article argues otherwise, its premise being that the international order founded on sovereign equal nation-states was co-constituted as well by the influence of relatively weak actors through decentralized processes of contestation over core international norms. Drawing on international relations, history, and law, this article outlines a framework to interpret the actions and mechanisms by which supposedly weak actors shaped international order. It concisely traces the constitution of order as based on its fundamental norms and assesses the implications of the argument for the current crisis of liberal order, as well as IR theory more broadly, laying out a research agenda for the future.
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| 5 |
ID:
171922
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| Summary/Abstract |
How did the transition from a world of empire to a global international system organised around the sovereign state play out? This article traces the transition over the past two centuries through an examination of membership debates in two prominent intergovernmental organisations (IGOs). IGOs are sites of contestation that play a role in the constitution of the international system. Discussions within IGOs reflect and shape broader international norms, and are one mechanism through which the international system determines questions of membership and attendant rights and obligations. The article reveals that IGO membership policies during this period reflected different compromises between the three competing principles of great power privilege, the ‘standard of civilisation’, and universal sovereign equality. The article contributes to Global IR as it confirms that non-Western agency was crucial in bringing about this transition. States in Africa, Asia, and Latin America championed the adoption of the sovereignty criterion. In this, paradoxically, one of the core constitutional norms of the ‘European’ international system – the principle of sovereign equality – was realised at the hands of non-European actors.
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| 6 |
ID:
187309
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| Summary/Abstract |
This concluding piece to the Special Issue on Interpolarity: Revisiting Security and the Global Order focuses on the concept of interpolarity as both a conceptual tool to understanding multipolar interdependencies and as an approach aiming to change the nature of multipolarity from one of rivalry and contestation toward one of cooperation in the face of global challenges. It engages with the question: To what extent is overcoming the tension between these poles a dilemma between interpolarity being a desirable goal and being a normative compromise on the values these poles want to uphold in the international arena? After presenting both sides of the dilemma, this piece concludes that an “interpolar” approach to conceptualizing International Relations (IR) can facilitate a more inclusive and comprehensive approach toward a truly global study of IR.
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| 7 |
ID:
145125
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| Summary/Abstract |
How to approach Global International Relations (IR)? This is a question asked by students of IR who recognize the limits of our field while expressing their concern that those who strive for a Global IR have been less-than-clear about the “how to?” question. In this article, I point to Edward W. Said’s approach to “contrapuntal reading” as one way of approaching Global IR that embraces diversity and reflects multiple and overlapping experiences and perspectives of humankind. More specifically, I suggest that contrapuntal reading offers students of IR a method of studying world politics that focuses on our “intertwined and overlapping histories,” past and present; an ethos for approaching IR through raising the “contrapuntal awareness” of its students and offering an anchor for those who translate the findings of different perspectives; and a metaphor for thinking about Global IR as regional and global, one and many.
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| 8 |
ID:
155324
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| 9 |
ID:
177074
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article addresses ongoing discussions across the English School (ES) of International Relations (IR) theory and IR theory drawing on Chinese philosophical traditions and Chinese history as exemplifying a “Global IR” approach. However, common interests in long-run history, non-material forms of power, and an international social structure have not yet led to sustained discussion of normative issues important to both approaches. Showing how analytical commonalities between ES and “Chinese” IR accounts of international societies and concepts of order and harmony focus on elite-level perspectives and priorities, I draw on critical and decolonial aspects of Global IR to argue for alternative accounts. Unexplored potential for this exists within the distinct methodological bases of ES and “Chinese IR,” opening space for normative engagement that can provide a model for other inter-tradition encounters in Global IR.
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| 10 |
ID:
188991
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| Summary/Abstract |
How can we appreciate non-Western agency in theorising world politics without reintroducing parochialism and exceptionalism, thus reproducing the very problem that motivated global international relations (IR) in the first place? In this article, I explore an alternative approach to engaging with non-Western IR theories, which I refer to as the embedded observer approach. First, taking the scholarship on Chinese IR as an example, I argue that the present predicament of global IR is in part attributable to the way scholars engage with non-Western political thought. Drawing from discussions in critical IR and Comparative Political Theory, I propose a methodological adjustment for the study of non-Western theories. Specifically, I argue that by shifting focus from isolated scholars and texts to critical dialogues among autochthonous intellectuals, the researcher has the chance to learn about and appreciate the clashes of ideas, analytical perspectives, and methodological tools that together constitute the living intellectual tradition in a non-Western society. As a demonstration, I analyse the People’s Republic of China (PRC) scholars’ critical reaction to Zhao Tingyang’s Tianxia System through the lens of three key topics in the debate over the thesis. The discussion highlights the need to rethink interlocutors in global IR and the utility of an embedded observer approach for engaging with knowledge traditions beyond the West, both in IR and beyond.
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| 11 |
ID:
155320
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| Summary/Abstract |
The complex architecture of fragmented authority in the international system remains under-theorized. Understanding the world of separatist regions that turn into de facto states is high on the research agenda. While patron states are said to be a necessary condition, we argue that it might not be a sufficient one to explain the varying degrees of survival/endurance of de facto states. This analytical essay is an effort to establish directions for research that would better account for the variation among cases by integrating their internal dynamics with what we already know about the role of external factors. Adopting a political sociology perspective, this article focuses on understudied aspects of internal processes and points to the role of local elites in state and nation-building during civil wars and after violence declines. We contend that such a perspective helps to account in a more comprehensive way for the processes underlying the status quo while, at the same time, analyzing the interplay between external and internal dynamics of frozen conflicts. We show that students of de facto states would gain from employing literatures on state-building and nation-building to articulate an analytical framework that would reassess the role of local elites in building a state and a nation, and analyze the societal (un)responsiveness as well as the strategies of passive or active accommodation, resistance or opposition within de facto states' populations.
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| 12 |
ID:
145119
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| Summary/Abstract |
Recent interest in Global international relations (IR) theory has prompted efforts to give voice to non-Western approaches to international politics, accentuating how cultures and their specific local problems contribute to distinct scholarly practices, and how this in turn challenges the hegemony of taken-for-granted, “universalized” Anglo-American IR theory. Encouraged by the overtures of Western academics, Chinese scholars have begun to articulate the role of “traditional” mindsets in Chinese thinking about world politics, proposing avenues toward the development of an IR theory “with Chinese characteristics.” Although these efforts are a laudable attempt to break through ethnocentrism, broaden the relevance of IR theory, and legitimate non-Western knowledge, we argue that the fact that gender seems to be entirely absent from the China-centered portion of this collaborative “West/non-West” project results in a partial and problematic approach: It fails to engage Chinese feminist theorizing by relying upon unexamined gendered concepts. This article uses the results of a series of interviews with mainland scholars to spotlight the challenges faced by existing Chinese IR feminists whose work is overlooked in mainstream Chinese IR’s holistic, Confucian approach to international society. We suggest ways gender sensitivity might inform debates about “Chinese IR” and how to improve Western efforts to engage non-Western IR more broadly.
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| 13 |
ID:
192079
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| Summary/Abstract |
The premise of Global IR for greater pluralism and inclusivity allows for reconsidering the relevance of established concepts in the IR discipline. This article discusses how Global IR can contribute to rethinking the question of agency in the middle power concept. While the concept has been used in a Western and non-Western context, there is a tendency to adopt a binary distinction between Western middle powers that are conformist in their approach to the liberal international order and Southern middle powers that adopt a reformist stance. The article argues that a Global IR approach can help overcome this dichotomy and open up the study of Western and Southern middle powers to new agential possibilities. To demonstrate this, the article discusses how the cases of Australia and Brazil are not limited to conformist and reformist middle power agencies respectively. The discussion shows how the two states have undergone periods of ambivalence to gradually project new forms of middle power agency that alter and redefine their roles within the liberal international order.
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| 14 |
ID:
169058
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| Summary/Abstract |
Over the last decade, a call for decolonisation has challenged IR scholarship. The call has advocated for the need to decolonise the epistemology and ontology of the discipline, critically engaging with the legacies of imperialism, colonialism, racism, and patriarchy in global power relations. Parallel to the decolonial project, a call to globalise International Relations has been made by well-known scholars in recent years predominantly through the Global IR project. In this review essay of four books I briefly engage with the debates around Global IR and its critics drawing on a decolonial perspective. On the one hand, I discuss the potentialities and limitations of historiographical deconstruction as a methodological tool, raising issues with the current silencing of the ‘present’ due to the continued coloniality of knowledge. On the other hand, I delve into the wide range of possibilities that a serious and critical commitment to diversifying the discipline of IR might bring to academics in the so-called non-West/Global South. I analyse current critiques of Global IR considering them necessary though, in some cases, agents for the reification and silencing of the interests of the non-West/Global South. I argue that, whilst coloniality operates in multiple ways, decoloniality is also a project that surpasses the ideal total exteriority as imagined through the West/non-West dichotomy.
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| 15 |
ID:
145120
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| Summary/Abstract |
International relations (IR) scholars commonly accept the sovereign state’s ubiquity today as the endpoint of a centuries-long process of modernization, spearheaded by European imperialism. Through this schema, European military superiority enabled Westerners to first impose themselves on non-European societies in the early modern period. The later spread of Western conceptions of national self-determination then compelled global convergence toward the sovereign state form after 1945. Conversely, I argue here that such accounts overstate the West’s margin of military superiority over non-Europeans throughout the age of empire. As a result, they also exaggerate European latitude in imposing their preferred institutional forms on conquered societies and mischaracterize the character of colonial modernity. Drawing inspiration from global history and harnessing illustrations from the Indian Ocean region, I argue that Western imperialism was critically mediated by Europeans’ alliances of convenience with indigenous partners. This dependence on local allies persisted throughout the colonial era as Western imperialists leveraged local institutions and conceptions of political legitimacy to perpetuate colonial rule. Acknowledging this reality forces us to critically revisit conventional narratives about the sovereign state system’s universalization, and to foreground hybridity over homogenization as global modernity’s master theme.
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| 16 |
ID:
165148
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article aims to address how to ensure a two-way ‘dialogue’ across ‘the West/non-West distinction’ in international studies. To this end, I first discuss three different approaches to dialogue, the Socratic, the Habermasian, and the Weberian, and clarify what kind of thing dialogue should be if it is to overcome the ‘West-non-West divide’ and transform the current ‘Western-centric’ IR into a global discipline. I argue that dialogue should be understood as reciprocal feedback from different perspectives for mutual learning. In order to achieve this goal (i.e. mutual learning), I call for an ‘instrumentalist’ approach to dialogue. To elucidate this point, I offer an empirical illustration. The focus here is on dialogue as mutual learning between Western-centric IR theory, more specifically constructivism, and the indigenous experience and knowledge of East Asia.
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| 17 |
ID:
183512
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| Summary/Abstract |
Australian International Relations (IR) has grown dramatically in recent years, but more importantly, it has internationalised and diversified. Australian scholars areleading voices in many of the field’s central debates, addressing a multiplicity of questions, empirical and theoretical. Globally, however, the field of IR is at a crossroad. It is challenged to acknowledge its Eurocentric origins and biases, grasp the long shadow that empire casts over the international system, and shed its intellectual blinkers by drawing on non-Western ideas, practices, and historical experiences. This demands more of Australian scholars than continued international engagement: it poses far reaching questions about the field we are engaging, who we will be in this field, and the direction our contributions will nudge IR. This article explores the challenges and opportunities that ‘going global’ present. Crucially, it requires an ontological reorientation in how we conceive international relations as a domain of politics and demands a shift in normative reasoning, emphasising the ethics of recognition and hierarchy. Making these moves offers exciting opportunities for the revitalisation of the study of Australian foreign policy, enabling us to rethink the ‘foreign’ in such policy, the evolution of the ‘rules-based international order’, and the nature of ‘region’.
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| 18 |
ID:
186116
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| Summary/Abstract |
Recent developments in the Asia-Pacific or Indo-Pacific region have illustrated the emergence of a contested region and unfolding regional order. Within the multiplicity, as argued in the introduction of the special issue, all stakeholders, including the weak state actors, not necessarily the superior ones, are participating in the process of order-building. This article looks at how Indonesia, the largest member country of ASEAN, pursues its agency amid the contested regional formulations between China and the US. The argument is that Indonesia promotes its concept of a rules-based interaction beyond the dominant great power politics, as a potential agency enabling the creation of a pluralised regional order. This agential position provides the basis to rethink the relevance of the established conceptual framework of hedging commonly used to understand small and middle powers’ foreign policies toward the major players. The author sees that Indonesia hedges in different ways, demonstrating a distinct conceptualisation which is likely to make a contribution to the project of Global IR.
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| 19 |
ID:
192191
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| Summary/Abstract |
International Relations (IR) has long been criticized for taking a particular (Western) experience as basis for formulating theories with claim to universal validity. In response, recent discussions have therefore centered on making IR ‘truly global’, that is, more inclusive and less parochial in its language and substance. But the concept of the global underpinning this discussion is both illusive and strongly contested. It requires problematization. But how? In this Forum, scholars discuss this question with a forward-looking agenda. Building on recent critical engagements with the question of the global as a concept in general and Global IR specifically, the authors ask how the global should be problematized in order to achieve a (more) progressive agenda for IR. They draw on different regional and disciplinary perspectives to both further the agenda of a less exclusive and racist discipline without falling into the trap of shallow inclusivity, and to discuss ways of problematizing the global without falling back into nativism or nationalism.
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| 20 |
ID:
155322
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| Summary/Abstract |
The field of IR has been described as an “‘inter’-type discipline,” in the sense that it is devoted to studying the interactions of different kinds of international actors (Lapid 1996, 10). However, despite the fact that the discipline has never been blind vis-à-vis the “in-between” (or relational) dimension of the subject matter (Kaiser 1971, 791; Rosenau 1990, 40–42; Kratochwil 2007, 502–3), much of the focus in recent years’ discussions has, in various ways, been directed to the inter-national in IR-theory. While acknowledging that this has alerted the discipline about the prevalent Western-centrism in much IR-theory and how it helped foster an awareness of the diversity of IR-communities around the globe, the present forum takes its point of departure in the view that in order to make the academic field of IR-theory worthy of its own name, it is now time to move the debate about global IR (Acharya 2014) a step further and connect it to what has been unearthed in recent decades’ mapping of IR around the globe. To succeed in this endeavor, this forum suggests that it is necessary to both refocus and recalibrate the “inter” in IR-theory. Thus, in addition to bringing attention back to the inter-national dimension of IR-theory, it is also necessary to examine the conditions that determine how relevant actors (e.g., scholars and practitioners) interact in producing knowledge about “the international,” that is, the forms, formats, and foci of intellectual interactions (cf. Rösch and Watanabe 2016; Acharya 2016).
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