The Myth of International Order

The Myth of International Order PDF Author: Arjun Chowdhury
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190686715
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Incapable yet central : the paradox of the modern state -- The self-undermining state -- Europe as an other -- Restaging the state -- Sympathy for the neoliberal -- Origins of anarchy : anti-colonial movements and postcolonial order -- Suffering spectators of development -- Full circle -- A world of weak states

The Myth of International Order

The Myth of International Order PDF Author: Arjun Chowdhury
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190686715
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book

Book Description
Incapable yet central : the paradox of the modern state -- The self-undermining state -- Europe as an other -- Restaging the state -- Sympathy for the neoliberal -- Origins of anarchy : anti-colonial movements and postcolonial order -- Suffering spectators of development -- Full circle -- A world of weak states

The Myth of International Order

The Myth of International Order PDF Author: Arjun Chowdhury
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780190686758
Category : Decentralization in government
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
This ambitious text takes on a fundamental political puzzle: most states in the international system are 'weak' states, states unable to monopolize violence or provide public goods, and yet the nation-state remains the primary organizational form for world politics. In addressing this, Arjun Chowdhury shows why states everywhere face popular dissatisfaction with their performance, and why addressing this dissatisfaction - through institutional alternatives to the state like the European Union, or through higher taxation - is so difficult.

War, States, and International Order

War, States, and International Order PDF Author: Claire Vergerio
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 100911686X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
Who has the right to wage war? The answer to this question constitutes one of the most fundamental organizing principles of any international order. Under contemporary international humanitarian law, this right is essentially restricted to sovereign states. It has been conventionally assumed that this arrangement derives from the ideas of the late-sixteenth century jurist Alberico Gentili. Claire Vergerio argues that this story is a myth, invented in the late 1800s by a group of prominent international lawyers who crafted what would become the contemporary laws of war. These lawyers reinterpreted Gentili's writings on war after centuries of marginal interest, and this revival was deeply intertwined with a project of making the modern sovereign state the sole subject of international law. By uncovering the genesis and diffusion of this narrative, Vergerio calls for a profound reassessment of when and with what consequences war became the exclusive prerogative of sovereign states.

The Myth of Global Chaos

The Myth of Global Chaos PDF Author: Yahya M. Sadowski
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815798083
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
When the Cold War ended in 1989, American hopes for a new world order were quickly disappointed. A new wave of violence soon erupted, engulfing places from Rwanda and Somalia to Chechnya and Bosnia. These new "clashes of civilizations," fundamentalist jihads, and ethnic massacres appeared to be more savage and less rational than the long twilight struggle with the USSR, during which Washington's adversary was clearly identified and relatively predictable. In an effort to understand these post-Cold War conflicts and to advise the government on how to deal with them, a new school of foreign policy thought has developed. Dubbed "chaos theory," it argues that the much heralded processes of globalization are actually breeding a reaction of irrational violence. Thus, the spread of Western cultural icons through new electronic media often shocks and offends moral sensibilities in traditional societies. The explosive growth of international commerce has triggered a wave of migration and urbanization that throws together people from different cultures and fertilizes xenophobia. Chaos theory has already won converts in the U.S. military, the intelligence community, and the foreign service. Its influence has been manifest in an array of policies, particularly during the U.S. engagement in Bosnia. But chaos theory is mostly wrong. In this book, the author outlines the growth of chaos theory and its growing influence, and then provides a thorough empirical critique. Using detailed studies of Bosnia and global comparisons, he shows that globalization has not played a decisive role in fueling recent conflicts. Indeed, journalists' impressions notwithstanding, there is no evidence that since 1989 warfare has become more savage or even more frequent. The advocates of chaos theory are thus urging the U.S. to invest in preparing for a threat that is largely mythical--a strategy that is at least wasteful and potentially dangerous. The author argues that the most use

The Myth of 1648

The Myth of 1648 PDF Author: Benno Teschke
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1789605075
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 490

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Book Description
Winner of the 2003 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize This book rejects a commonplace of European history: that the treaties of Westphalia not only closed the Thirty Years' War but also inaugurated a new international order driven by the interaction of territorial sovereign states. Benno Teschke, through this thorough and incisive critique, argues that this is not the case. Domestic 'social property relations' shaped international relations in continental Europe down to 1789 and even beyond. The dynastic monarchies that ruled during this time differed from their medieval predecessors in degree and form of personalization, but not in underlying dynamic. 1648, therefore, is a false caesura in the history of international relations. For real change we must wait until relatively recent times and the development of modern states and true capitalism. In effect, it's not until governments are run impersonally, with no function other than the exercise of its monopoly on violence, that modern international relations are born.

Myths of Empire

Myths of Empire PDF Author: Jack Snyder
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801468590
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
Overextension is the common pitfall of empires. Why does it occur? What are the forces that cause the great powers of the industrial era to pursue aggressive foreign policies? Jack Snyder identifies recurrent myths of empire, describes the varieties of overextension to which they lead, and criticizes the traditional explanations offered by historians and political scientists.He tests three competing theories—realism, misperception, and domestic coalition politics—against five detailed case studies: early twentieth-century Germany, Japan in the interwar period, Great Britain in the Victorian era, the Soviet Union after World War II, and the United States during the Cold War. The resulting insights run counter to much that has been written about these apparently familiar instances of empire building.

Myth and Narrative in International Politics

Myth and Narrative in International Politics PDF Author: Berit Bliesemann de Guevara
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137537523
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
This book systematically explores how different theoretical concepts of myth can be utilised to interpretively explore contemporary international politics. From the international community to warlords, from participation to effectiveness – international politics is replete with powerful narratives and commonly held beliefs that qualify as myths. Rebutting the understanding of myth-as-lie, this collection of essays unearths the ideological, naturalising, and depoliticising effect of myths. Myth and Narrative in International Politics: Interpretive Approaches to the Study of IR offers conceptual and methodological guidance on how to make sense of different myth theories and how to employ them in order to explore the powerful collective imaginations and ambiguities that underpin international politics today. Further, it assembles case studies of specific myths in different fields of International Relations, including warfare, global governance, interventionism, development aid, and statebuilding. The findings challenge conventional assumptions in International Relations, encouraging academics in IR and across a range of different fields and disciplines, including development studies, global governance studies, strategic and military studies, intervention and statebuilding studies, and peace and conflict studies, to rethink ideas that are widely unquestioned by policy and academic communities.

The False Promise of Liberal Order

The False Promise of Liberal Order PDF Author: Patrick Porter
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509542132
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
In an age of demagogues, hostile great powers and trade wars, foreign policy traditionalists dream of restoring liberal international order. This order, they claim, ushered in seventy years of peace and prosperity and saw post-war America domesticate the world to its values. The False Promise of Liberal Order exposes the flaws in this nostalgic vision. The world shaped by America came about as a result of coercion and, sometimes brutal, compromise. Liberal projects – to spread capitalist democracy – led inadvertently to illiberal results. To make peace, America made bargains with authoritarian forces. Even in the Pax Americana, the gentlest order yet, ordering was rough work. As its power grew, Washington came to believe that its order was exceptional and even permanent – a mentality that has led to spiralling deficits, permanent war and Trump. Romanticizing the liberal order makes it harder to adjust to today’s global disorder. Only by confronting the false promise of liberal order and adapting to current realities can the United States survive as a constitutional republic in a plural world.

The Myth of International Protection

The Myth of International Protection PDF Author: Claudia Seymour
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520299833
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
In this viscerally intense, ethnographically-based work, Claudia Seymour, a former child protection advisor and human rights investigator for the United Nations, chronicles the heart-wrenching stories of young people in the Democratic Republic of Congo—young people who live on the front lines of conflict, in neighborhoods and villages destroyed by war, and on the streets in conditions of poverty and destitution. Seymour shares her personal journey, one that begins with the will to do good yet ends with the realization of how international aid can contribute to greater harm than good. The idea of protection and universalized human rights is turned on its head as Seymour uncovers the complicities and hypocrisies of the aid world—that in its promotion of “inalienable human rights”, the complex historical and socio-economic dynamics that lead to the violations of such rights are ignored. The Myth of International Protection offers a new perspective to reframe how the world sees the DRC, and urges global audiences to consider their own roles in fueling the DRC’s seemingly endless violence.

The Global Village Myth

The Global Village Myth PDF Author: Patrick Porter
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1626161925
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Porter challenges the powerful ideology of "Globalism" that is widely subscribed to by the US national security community. Globalism entails visions of a perilous shrunken world in which security interests are interconnected almost without limit, exposing even powerful states to instant war. Globalism does not just describe the world, but prescribes expansive strategies to deal with it, portraying a fragile globe that the superpower must continually tame into order. Porter argues that this vision of the world has resulted in the US undertaking too many unnecessary military adventures and dangerous strategic overstretch. Distance and geography should be some of the factors that help the US separate the important from the unimportant in international relations. The US should also recognize that, despite the latest technologies, projecting power over great distances still incurs frictions and costs that set real limits on American power. Reviving an appreciation of distance and geography would lead to a more sensible and sustainable grand strategy.