Norms Without the Great Powers

Norms Without the Great Powers PDF Author: Adam Bower
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192507176
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Can multilateral treaties succeed in transforming conduct when they are rejected by the most powerful states in the international system? In the past two decades, coalitions of middle-power states and transnational civil society groups have negotiated binding legal agreements in the face of concerted opposition from China, Russia, andmost especiallythe United States. These instances of a so-called 'new diplomacy' reflect a deliberate attempt to use the language of international law to bypass great power objections in establishing new global standards. Yet critics have frequently derided such treaties as utopian and counter productive because they fail to include those states allegedly most capable of effectively managing complex international cooperation. Thus far no study has offered a systematic, comparative study of the promise, and limits, of multilateralism without the great powers. Norms Without the Great Powers addresses this gap through the presentation of a novel theoretical account and detailed empirical evidence regarding the implementation of two archetypal cases, the antipersonnel Mine Ban Treaty and International Criminal Court. Both treaties have substantially reshaped expectations and behaviour in their respective domains, but with important variation in the extent and breadth of their impact. These findings provide the impetus for assessing the prospects for similar strategies on other topics of contemporary global concern. This book offers a timely addition to the dynamic and growing literature on the practice and consequences of international governance and should appeal to academics, civil society experts, and foreign policy practitioners working in fields such as security, human rights, and the environment.

Norms Without the Great Powers

Norms Without the Great Powers PDF Author: Adam Bower
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192507176
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book Here

Book Description
Can multilateral treaties succeed in transforming conduct when they are rejected by the most powerful states in the international system? In the past two decades, coalitions of middle-power states and transnational civil society groups have negotiated binding legal agreements in the face of concerted opposition from China, Russia, andmost especiallythe United States. These instances of a so-called 'new diplomacy' reflect a deliberate attempt to use the language of international law to bypass great power objections in establishing new global standards. Yet critics have frequently derided such treaties as utopian and counter productive because they fail to include those states allegedly most capable of effectively managing complex international cooperation. Thus far no study has offered a systematic, comparative study of the promise, and limits, of multilateralism without the great powers. Norms Without the Great Powers addresses this gap through the presentation of a novel theoretical account and detailed empirical evidence regarding the implementation of two archetypal cases, the antipersonnel Mine Ban Treaty and International Criminal Court. Both treaties have substantially reshaped expectations and behaviour in their respective domains, but with important variation in the extent and breadth of their impact. These findings provide the impetus for assessing the prospects for similar strategies on other topics of contemporary global concern. This book offers a timely addition to the dynamic and growing literature on the practice and consequences of international governance and should appeal to academics, civil society experts, and foreign policy practitioners working in fields such as security, human rights, and the environment.

Norms Without the Great Powers

Norms Without the Great Powers PDF Author: Adam Bower
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198789874
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
This book explores the nature of power in world politics, and the particular role that law plays in defining the meaning and deployment of power in the international system.

Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers

Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers PDF Author: Yan Xuetong
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691210225
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
A leading foreign policy thinker uses Chinese political theory to explain why some powers rise as others decline and what this means for the international order Why has China grown increasingly important in the world arena while lagging behind the United States and its allies across certain sectors? Using the lens of classical Chinese political theory, Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers explains China’s expanding influence by presenting a moral-realist theory that attributes the rise and fall of great powers to political leadership. Yan Xuetong shows that the stronger a rising state’s political leadership, the more likely it is to displace a prevailing state in the international system. Yan shows how rising states like China transform the international order by reshaping power distribution and norms, and he considers America’s relative decline in international stature even as its economy, education system, military, political institutions, and technology hold steady. Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers offers a provocative, alternative perspective on the changing dominance of states.

The Great Powers and the International System

The Great Powers and the International System PDF Author: Bear F. Braumoeller
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139560441
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Do great leaders make history? Or are they compelled to act by historical circumstance? This debate has remained unresolved since Thomas Carlyle and Karl Marx framed it in the mid-nineteenth century, yet implicit answers inform our policies and our views of history. In this book, Professor Bear F. Braumoeller argues persuasively that both perspectives are correct: leaders shape the main material and ideological forces of history that subsequently constrain and compel them. His studies of the Congress of Vienna, the interwar period, and the end of the Cold War illustrate this dynamic, and the data he marshals provide systematic evidence that leaders both shape and are constrained by the structure of the international system.

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (Updated Edition)

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (Updated Edition) PDF Author: John J. Mearsheimer
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393076245
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 572

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Book Description
"A superb book.…Mearsheimer has made a significant contribution to our understanding of the behavior of great powers."—Barry R. Posen, The National Interest The updated edition of this classic treatise on the behavior of great powers takes a penetrating look at the question likely to dominate international relations in the twenty-first century: Can China rise peacefully? In clear, eloquent prose, John Mearsheimer explains why the answer is no: a rising China will seek to dominate Asia, while the United States, determined to remain the world's sole regional hegemon, will go to great lengths to prevent that from happening. The tragedy of great power politics is inescapable.

Restraining Great Powers

Restraining Great Powers PDF Author: T. V. Paul
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300228481
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
At the end of the Cold War, the United States emerged as the world's most powerful state, and then used that power to initiate wars against smaller countries in the Middle East and South Asia. According to balance-of-power theory--the bedrock of realism in international relations--other states should have joined together militarily to counterbalance the United States' rising power. Yet they did not. Nor have they united to oppose Chinese aggression in the South China Sea or Russian offensives along its western border. This does not mean balance-of-power politics is dead, argues renowned international relations scholar T. V. Paul; instead it has taken a different form. Rather than employ familiar strategies such as active military alliances and arms buildups, leading powers have engaged in "soft balancing," which seeks to restrain threatening powers through the use of international institutions, informal alignments, and economic sanctions. Paul places the evolution of balancing behavior in historical perspective, from the post-Napoleonic era to today's globalized world. This book offers an illuminating examination of how subtler forms of balance-of-power politics can help states achieve their goals against aggressive powers without wars or arms races.

The Right to Self-determination Under International Law

The Right to Self-determination Under International Law PDF Author: Milena Sterio
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415668182
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Presents the legal cases for self-determination in East Timor, Kosovo, Chechnya, Georgia (South Ossetia and Abkhazia) and in South Sudan.

China and Great Power Responsibility for Climate Change

China and Great Power Responsibility for Climate Change PDF Author: Sanna Kopra
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351365509
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
As American leadership over climate change declines, China has begun to identify itself as a great power by formulating ambitious climate policies. Based on the premise that great powers have unique responsibilities, this book explores how China’s rise to great power status transforms notions of great power responsibility in general and international climate politics in particular. The author looks empirically at the Chinese party-state’s conceptions of state responsibility, discusses the influence of those notions on China’s role in international climate politics, and considers both how China will act out its climate responsibility in the future and the broader implications of these actions. Alongside the argument that the international norm of climate responsibility is an emerging attribute of great power responsibility, Kopra develops a normative framework of great power responsibility to shed new light on the transformations China’s rise will yield and the kind of great power China will prove to be. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, China studies, foreign policy studies, international organizations, international ethics and environmental politics.

Just Politics

Just Politics PDF Author: C. William Walldorf, Jr.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 080145963X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Many foreign policy analysts assume that elite policymakers in liberal democracies consistently ignore humanitarian norms when these norms interfere with commercial and strategic interests. Today's endorsement by Western governments of repressive regimes in countries from Kazakhstan to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in the name of fighting terror only reinforces this opinion. In Just Politics, C. William Walldorf Jr. challenges this conventional wisdom, arguing that human rights concerns have often led democratic great powers to sever vital strategic partnerships even when it has not been in their interest to do so.Walldorf sets out his case in detailed studies of British alliance relationships with the Ottoman Empire and Portugal in the nineteenth century and of U.S. partnerships with numerous countries—ranging from South Africa, Turkey, Greece and El Salvador to Nicaragua, Chile, and Argentina—during the Cold War. He finds that illiberal behavior by partner states, varying degrees of pressure by nonstate actors, and legislative activism account for the decisions by democracies to terminate strategic partnerships for human rights reasons.To demonstrate the central influence of humanitarian considerations and domestic politics in the most vital of strategic moments of great-power foreign policy, Walldorf argues that Western governments can and must integrate human rights into their foreign policies. Failure to take humanitarian concerns into account, he contends, will only damage their long-term strategic objectives.

Regions and Powers

Regions and Powers PDF Author: Barry Buzan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521891110
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 598

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Book Description
This book develops the idea that since decolonisation, regional patterns of security have become more prominent in international politics. The authors combine an operational theory of regional security with an empirical application across the whole of the international system. Individual chapters cover Africa, the Balkans, CIS Europe, East Asia, EU Europe, the Middle East, North America, South America, and South Asia. The main focus is on the post-Cold War period, but the history of each regional security complex is traced back to its beginnings. By relating the regional dynamics of security to current debates about the global power structure, the authors unfold a distinctive interpretation of post-Cold War international security, avoiding both the extreme oversimplifications of the unipolar view, and the extreme deterritorialisations of many globalist visions of a new world disorder. Their framework brings out the radical diversity of security dynamics in different parts of the world.