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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
145706
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| Summary/Abstract |
Civil war acutely inhibits economic growth, according to a prominent set of civil war literature. However, recent scholarship observes that foreign direct investment (FDI), considered a central vehicle of growth, is entering countries with internal armed conflicts unabated. Furthermore, some civil war economies exhibit substantial increases in FDI during conflict. According to this scholarship, FDI enters conflict zones in spite of violence. This article contrastingly adopts a critical framework acknowledging the often violent characteristics of globalized capitalism. By analyzing Colombia's oil industry (the country's largest sector of FDI), this article suggests that civil war violence can create conditions that facilitate FDI inflows. More specifically, this article posits that violence perpetrated by armed groups sympathetic to the interests of the oil industry—namely the public armed forces and right-wing paramilitaries—has facilitated FDI in Colombia's oil sector. In particular, processes of forced displacement and violence against civilian groups have served to protect economically important infrastructure and have acquired land for oil exploration. Moreover, civilian groups deemed inimical to oil interests have been violently targeted. By using disaggregate-level data on the conflict in Arauca, an important oil-producing region of Colombia, this case study indicates that intensifying levels of civil war violence in areas of economic interest are followed by increases in oil production, exploration, and investment.
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| 2 |
ID:
145705
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| Summary/Abstract |
Over the last 25 years, there has been a noteworthy turn across major International Relations (IR) theories to include domestic politics and decision-making factors. Neoclassical realism and variants of liberalism and constructivism, for example, have incorporated state motives, perceptions, domestic political institutions, public opinion, and political culture. These theoretical developments, however, have largely ignored decades of research in foreign policy analysis (FPA) examining how domestic political and decision-making factors affect actors’ choices and policies. This continues the historical disconnect between FPA and “mainstream” IR, resulting in contemporary IR theories that are considerably underdeveloped. This article revisits the reasons for this separation and demonstrates the gaps between IR theory and FPA research. I argue that a distinct FPA perspective, one that is psychologically-oriented and agent-based, can serve as a complement, a competitor, and an integrating crucible for the cross-theoretical turn toward domestic politics and decision making in IR theory.
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| 3 |
ID:
145704
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| Summary/Abstract |
The use of ethnographic methods is on the rise in International Relations. However, research in this area has largely been constrained to critical or interpretive analysis of nontraditional objects of study. This has been driven in part by two practical problems that limit ethnographic analysis: that of aggregation, as international phenomena are necessarily large in scale, and that of access, as institutional settings are often closed or secretive. While we commend critical and nontraditional research for driving much-needed expansion of the disciplinary agenda, we offer a complementary account, arguing that scholars can also use ethnographic methods in explanatory research. To do so, we draw on two methodological literatures in anthropology. The first approximates ethnographic research through historical immersion. The second applies ethnographic methods at multiple research sites, tracking transnational phenomena across them. The paper sketches prospective studies of each kind, concerning the creation and implementation of the United Nations. While neither method is entirely new to IR, the methodological literatures in question have yet to receive systematic treatment in the field.
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| 4 |
ID:
145707
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| Summary/Abstract |
While the role of honor as a war-generating factor has been widely discussed in International Relations (IR) scholarship, there is insufficient theoretical and empirical research that identifies and conceptualizes the influence of honor on foreign policy decision making. It is the argument of this article that honor plays a dramatic role not only in causing conflicts but also in negotiations to resolve them. To illustrate this point, the article examines the way Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's conception of honor shaped Israel's foreign policy toward Turkey following the Mavi Marmara flotilla crisis of May 2010.
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| 5 |
ID:
145708
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article advances a unified explanation of intersubjective rules, international agents, and historical structures. It also ties in national identity narratives and international practices. It shows that rules, suitably defined, instantiate and assemble themselves to form national-autobiographical narratives that become the identities of states, motivating their actions and practices. Agents here do not follow rules, rather self-activating rules constitute agents. Rules are distributed across states and other agents, some shared widely and others held narrowly. A rule can gain or lose credibility among the agents it constitutes. Rules depend on the operation of other agents’ rules for their credibility. An international historical structure is a collection of rules distributed among different states that operate to vindicate each other. The rules, shared and divided across agents, motivate practices that vindicate the rules. This process of structuration gives rise to enduring social networks of agents connected by interdependent practices. This process also yields the historical dynamics of the rise, fall, and succession of structures. Structures rise, unevenly, as new rules and practices join into the reproduction process and some old ones drop out. Structures break down when some rules are discredited, leading to a disruption of established practices, causing the discredit of yet more rules. Agents can be transformed radically. This model has strong empirical reference as the rules define categories, norms, and causal beliefs visible in discourse. The case of US-Russian relations is used for illustration.
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