European Journal of International Relations

This article draws attention to a fundamental reconstitution of the global public domain: away from one that for more than three centuries equated the "public" in international politics with sovereign states and the interstate realm, to one in which the very system of states is becoming embedded in a broader and deepening transnational arena concerned with the production of global public goods. One concrete instance of this transformation is the growing significance of global corporate social responsibility initiatives triggered by the dynamic interplay between civil society actors and multinational corporations. The UN Global Compact and corporate involvement in HIV/AIDS treatment programs are discussed as examples. The analytical parameters of the emerging global public domain are defined, and some of its consequences illustrated by the chain of responses to the Bush administration’s rejection of the Kyoto Protocol by a variety of domestic and transnational social actors.

This article attempts to explain the variation in post-Maastricht elite attitudes toward the single currency in Western Europe. It concentrates on the British reluctance to join the single currency in the first round as well as the French and German continuing support for it. We argue, first, that explanations based solely on material conceptions of actors' interests — whether economic or geopolitical — are insufficient in explaining the variation in attitudes. There are as many good economic or geopolitical reasons in favour of the Euro as there are against it. In particular, perceived instrumental interests of actors as such do not explain the considerable variation in attitudes. Rather, we claim that actors' perception of their material and instrumental interests with regard to the Euro are deeply influenced by their visions of European political order. Second, the visions about European order which give political meaning to EMU, need to be understood in the framework of identity politics. Differences in the construction of collective elite identities pertaining to the nation-state and to Europe explain the controversies among the political elites in the three countries as well as the variation in attitudes. While the French and German political elites — from the centre-right to the centre-left — have incorporated `Europe' into their nationally defined collective identities, British policy-makers including New Labour remain hesitant. Third, on a more conceptual level, this article does not try to push an `identity versus interest' argument. Rather, we claim that the causal arrows run both ways. Collective nation-state identities define the realm of instrumental or material interests considered legitimate and appropriate in a given political discourse. We claim this to be the case in Britain and Germany. The more identity constructions are contested or in flux in a political discourse, however, the more likely it is that those constructions carry the day which actors see as furthering their perceived instrumental, political or economic interests. We argue that this was the case in France.

This paper uncovers some of the implicit assumptions of polity-formation underpinning the debate about the European Union's democratic legitimacy. It uses theories of nationalism to understand why a demos is unlikely to develop easily at the European level. Based on a two-by-two categorization of the logic and scope of identity-formation, I conclude that the most promising approach to European demos-formation conceives of identities as both constructed and "sticky". Labeling this theoretical position "bounded integration," I suggest that it provides a more realistic foundation for developing democracy-enhancing reform proposals than does post-nationalist theorizing, especially due to the former's explicit attention to identity-conferring mechanisms such as education, language, and media.

This article argues that the German Confederation — deutscher Bund — (1815–66)was a form of rule built on early modern republican political theory. It was a ‘Compound Republic’ form of rule constructed to prevent the emergence of a system of sovereign German states as well as a single sovereign German state. Its purpose was maintaining peace and stability in Europe and safeguarding the autonomy of its member polities. Contemporary statesmen, intellectuals and scholars saw these purposes as complementary. A non-sovereign, polycentric and republican organization of the German lands was regarded as a natural and necessary component in a stable Europe free from war and revolutions. This article analyses the origins, institutions and policies of the German Confederation, with particular regard to how the means of organized violence were organized. It thereby demonstrates the implementation of republican ideas and purposes in the Bund. The article situates the Bund in 19th-century thinking about European stability and sovereignty, further demonstrating the prevalence of republican ideas on international order. Republican political theories and institutions differed sharply from modern theories and models of international relations. Consequently, the history of international politics, the European system of states and state-formation must be re-conceptualized more in line with historical realities.

This article addresses the question whether membership in the ‘Anglosphere’ — a grouping of English-speaking states/nations — impacts the likelihood of participation in US-led coalitions of the willing. I translate the Anglosphere into International Relations (IR) theory using a tripartite division of realism, liberalism and constructivism. In a quantitative empirical analysis of a sample of US-led military coalitions between 1950 and 2001, I find robust evidence of what can be seen as the Anglosphere effect: all else constant, English-speaking states/nations tend to be more willing to join US-led military coalitions than states/nations selected at random. I conclude with a discussion of future research avenues in the Anglosphere agenda in IR.

Genocide is widely seen as a phenomenon of domestic politics, which becomes of international significance because it offends against international law. Hence there are as yet inadequate International Relations analyses of the production of genocide. This article challenges the idea of the domestic genesis of genocide, and critiques the corresponding approach of ‘comparative genocide studies’ which is dominant in the field. It analyses the emergence of more fruitful ‘relational’ and ‘international’ approaches in critical genocide studies, while identifying the limitations of their accounts of the ‘international system’. As first steps towards an adequate international account, the article then explores questions of the international meaning and construction of genocidal relations, and of international relations as the context of genocide. It argues for a historical and sociological approach to the international relations of genocide, and examines 20th-century European genocide in this light. Arguing for a broader conception of this historical experience than is suggested by an exclusive focus on the Holocaust, the article offers an interpretation of genocide as increasingly endemic and systemic in international relations in the first half of the century. It concludes by arguing that this account offers a starting point, but not a model, for analyses of genocide in global international relations in the 21st century.

While the WTO secretariat, key delegations, several NGOs, and industry publicly present the August 30th 2003 WTO decision as an attempt to reconcile intellectual property with access to medicines, our research shows otherwise. We draw on qualitative analyses of 54 interviews and a lexicometric analysis of press releases to show that their enthusiastic public statements contrast deeply with their internal, cynical beliefs. Most of these actors not only consider the WTO decision to be fundamentally flawed but claim to have known this prior to its adoption. We argue that a procedural norm of consensus-seeking impeded traditional bargaining over this sensitive issue and that distrust among participants hindered truth-seeking deliberation. Caught between strategic and communicative actions, state and non-state actors found themselves trapped in their own rhetoric of reconciling intellectual property with access to medicines. They realized that the appearance of a solution, rather than a functional solution, provided the only realistic solution to a fruitless and publicly damaging continuation of debate. From a theoretical perspective, this case study sheds a new light on the gray zone between rational choice and constructivism, where both discourse and strategies matter. From an empirical perspective, it illustrates the risk of seeking consensus within international regimes when the procedural norm of consensus coexists with a high level of distrust.

Noting that UN summits are the most auspicious venue for non-state actors to popularize worldwide issues of concern, writings on international relations have emphasized the rise of a global civil society and its growing ability to use these events for influencing transnational politics. Based on findings of empirical research from six developing countries that hosted UN summits or important preparatory meetings (PrepComs), we suggest that national settings remain fundamental for civil society activism. We examine the outcome of UN summits on civil society in three dimensions: creation of political space, implementation of the summit’s agenda and alliance building. This study suggests that in each of these countries, the national processes of democratization and liberal economic reforms heavily influenced the outcome of these international conferences. In particular, the results reveal the paramount centrality of the state in the organization of the summit and in setting up parameters for civil society engagement during the follow-up process. While heterogeneity was an important trait of civil society, the UN bodies organizing the summits remained nearly absent in the post-summit period. A main conclusion emerging from the research is that, in addition to international connections, any major attempt on the part of civil society organizations (CSOs) to significantly participate in the political process, whether in the form of support or opposition, inescapably entails working with relation to the state in order to take advantage of the political opportunities available in the national context. Overall, the study results suggest that discussion on the rise of global civil society and international activism occurring in part thanks to UN summits needs to be supplemented by approaches that take into account national dynamics.

A consistent theme of the existing literature is that fair trade consumption practices represent acts of justice. In this article I investigate such an equation from the perspective of the moral theory of Adam Smith. Smith explains the development of moral sensibilities via an imaginative act he calls `sympathy'. For Smith, justice prevails in interpersonal relationships in which the potential for one person to do harm to another is ruled out because their respective imaginations are in perfect accord, thus creating a situation of mutual sympathy. I advance two main conclusions. First, I argue that fair trade consumption is undoubtedly a moral act in the manner described by Smith, as it involves consumers responding to fair trade campaigns in order to trigger their moral sensibilities through exercising their imaginative faculties. Second, though, I argue that fair trade consumption is not specifically a moral act of justice in the manner described by Smith. The structure of fair trade invites the First World consumer to display sympathy for the Third World producer, but it provides no means for that sympathy to be reciprocated. As such, instances of genuine mutual sympathy do not arise. From a Smithian perspective, fair trade consumption practices are an act of beneficence rather than an act of justice. They thereby reside in the realm of private virtue rather than the realm of public duty, with significant implications for the way in which trade justice is conceptualized and studied in IPE.

A typical adage of the globalization literature is that foreign economic liberalization undermines the social fabric of developing countries. This article examines this claim for the sub-Saharan African countries and thus the continent that experienced both low economic growth and a high incidence of armed conflict during the 1990s. Our results yield support for the assertion that economic openness durably pacifies countries once the restructuring of the economy is over. We can, however, not reject the possibility that the distributional consequences of foreign economic liberalization increase the risk of civil war during the implementation of the reform measures. We contrast this ‘distributional’ model with alternative explanations such as the role of the International Monetary Fund and the level of democracy. A comparative case study on Guinea and Guinea-Bissau lends some illustrative evidence to the claim that compensating the losers of globalization can pacify intrastate relations.

This article provides a theoretical and empirical account of the zone of negative peace thought to encompass the 16 states of West Africa from independence through the early 1990s. I draw on constructivist theory to argue that the zone of negative peace is a particular kind of interstate culture resulting from the formation of rival role relationships between states in the region. This theoretical approach combined with a compatible empirical measure of rivalry allows a quantitative test of a variety of well-known explanations for the zone of peace phenomenon. The simultaneous equations statistical analysis allows us to model the effect that rival role relationships have on the Lockean culture of anarchy, and vice versa (i.e. the mutual constitution of agents and structures). The results also indicate that a Lockean culture of anarchy, or zone of negative peace, is affected by factors emphasized by realists, liberals, and constructivists in the West African context.

Having raised the question of whither the international at the end of International Relations a few years ago, this article treats the state of International Relations theory as a continuing endist issue for discussion. Of interest is the restructuring of the field in the post-Cold War years, partly as a result of debates about epistemologies and partly in light of the failure of realisms to lead International Relations to the door of the Soviet and Eastern Bloc collapse, which many thought it could. As the world globalized, so did International Relations, turning itself into a field of differences — theoretical, geographical, philosophical, methodological, and so on. Is this the end of International Relations or its new afterlife? I argue that there are signs that old topics of International Relations, like war, are being taken up in new ways and in new collaborations, such as those that feminist International Relations has forged. At the same time, many camps display the old International Relations tendency to elevate abstract thinking above quotidian international relations, even in the face of clear evidence that the agency of people played a major role in shifting Cold War and Middle East configurations of power. International Relations’ camps should strive less for their own distinctive analysis and more for communication with colleagues, ordinary people making today’s international relations and policy proponents.

Theories of globalization have tended to privilege structural explanations of change, whereas agency-centred approaches have either over-emphasized the potential autonomy of ideas and rule-writing or focused on relatively incremental changes. This article attempts to develop a structurationist analysis — i.e. not only that structure and agency are mutually constituted, but also that different types of structures interact with different types of actors in analytically distinct, ideal-type modes as well as in real time. A two-dimensional typology of structuration processes is postulated, in which the coherence of structures is said to be either loose or tight and the orientations of actors either structure-bound or transformational. Such a heuristic model, however, must be expanded to cover real-time structuration processes, which are highly complex and unpredictable. This is especially true of globalization, given its scale and scope, its many levels of interaction and types of actors, and its complex iterated character: globalization generates multiple equilibria. Consequently, structural variables involved in the globalization process do not merely constrain actors but also create structurally significant opportunities for some actors to enlarge their action repertoires within an expanding and increasingly complex playing field (transnational opportunity structures). Thus different categories of actors may develop greater potential capacity to exercise disproportionate leverage in shaping the contours of longer-term change. Three stylized categories of actors are briefly examined — economic, political and social — and a first cut is made at generating hypotheses about the potential differential impact of each. Three globalization scenarios are posited, and hypotheses are generated concerning (1) the potential scope available to each category of actors for shaping wider globalization processes and (2) the possible alternative ways each category might effectively alter the balance of convergence and divergence in a globalizing world, leading to different systemic outcomes.

Principal-Agent (P-A) theory sees the fact of delegation as defining a relationship be-tween states (collective Principals) and international organizations (Agents) with recon-tracting threats being the predominate way states influence IOs. Developing a category of Trustee-Agents, I argue that recontracting tools will be both harder to use and less effective at influencing the Trustee-Agents. Trustee-Agents are 1) selected because of their personal reputation or professional norms, 2) given independent authority to make decisions according to their best judgement or professional criteria, and 3) empowered to act on behalf of a beneficiary. Focusing on state-International Courts (IC) relations, the article develops an alternative explanation that highlights the need for international judges to balance legal fidelity with the significant international challenge of endeav-ouring compliance. The arguments are explored through three case studies of IC deci-sion-making that call into question the rational expectations claim that ICs are tailor-ing their decisions to reflect the wishes of powerful states and avoid adverse recontracting.

What factors influence IO faithfulness to mandates assigned by member states? Although recent literature treats IOs agents as autonomous actors in global politics, most work continues to treat the bureaucracy of an international organization as a unitary actor. I argue that the unitary actor assumption limits our ability to assess how internal factors such as fragmentation influence agent faithfulness. When we conceive of IO bureaucracies as collective agents — those including more than one bureaucratic actor and subject to internal fragmentation — IO faithfulness can be more fully explained. Specifically, fragmentation limits faithfulness by inhibiting the effectiveness of principals’ control mechanisms (i.e. oversight and agent screening and sanctioning). These arguments are illustrated using a case study of the World Health Organization and its efforts to improve health systems between 1982 and 2008.

Scholars have increasingly theorized, and debated, the decision by states to create and delegate authority to international courts, as well as the subsequent autonomy and behavior of those courts, with principal-agent and trusteeship models disagreeing on the nature and extent of states’ influence on international judges. This article formulates and tests a set of principal-agent hypotheses about the ways in which, and the conditions under which, member states are able use their powers of judicial nomination and appointment to influence the endogenous preferences of international judges. The empirical analysis surveys the record of all judicial appointments to the Appellate Body (AB) of the World Trade Organization over a 15-year period. We present a view of an AB appointment process that, far from representing a pure search for expertise, is deeply politicized and offers member-state principals opportunities to influence AB members ex ante and possibly ex post. We further demonstrate that the AB nomination process has become progressively more politicized over time as member states, responding to earlier and controversial AB decisions, became far more concerned about judicial activism and more interested in the substantive opinions of AB candidates, systematically championing candidates whose views on key issues most closely approached their own, and opposing candidates perceived to be activist or biased against their substantive preferences. Although specific to the WTO, our theory and findings have implications for the judicial politics of a large variety of global and regional international courts and tribunals.

A growing body of literature argues that democracies are more likely to comply with international agreements than authoritarian states. However, substantial variation exists in the compliance behaviour of democracies. How can this variation be explained? The same mechanism that links regime type to compliance, namely electoral competition, also explains variation in compliance among democracies. This is because the nature of electoral competition varies across democratic systems. An analysis of democratic GATT/WTO member countries from 1980 to 2003 reveals that governments elected via majoritarian electoral rules and/or single-member districts are more likely to violate GATT/WTO agreements than those elected via proportional electoral rules and/or multi-member districts.

This article uses an analysis of the securitization of HIV/AIDS as a basis for proposing three contributions to securitization theory. Beginning with an examination of some of the key debates which have taken place between the Copenhagen School and its critics, the article goes on to argue that the process of securitizing HIV/AIDS was in fact significantly more complex than has been generally recognized and, crucially, that a more nuanced reading of this case highlights a number of issues that are not well captured by the existing securitization theory literature. The first is that securitization can be a multi-level process, with distinct securitizing actors and audiences at each level. The second is that securitization can best be understood as a continuum rather than a binary condition, and that different members of an audience may place an issue at varying points along this spectrum. The third contribution we seek to make is an intervention in the debate over the role of empirical evidence in securitization, suggesting that claims about ‘empirical reality’ form a crucial part of securitizing speech acts, but that where doubts subsequently arise over the evidence for this ‘reality’, securitization can be undermined, a dynamic that we show in practice in the HIV/AIDS case.

In some countries during some periods America promotes liberal democracy; in others countries and periods, it tolerates or even supports authoritarianism. Why the variation? We focus on discrete decisions by a U.S. President to retain a dictator or instead impose democracy. Two conditions must be satisfied. First, an exogenous regime crisis must threaten the authoritarian client. Second, America’s capitalist-liberal-democratic regime must face no credible alternative in the region as a route to national development and security. Credible alternative models threaten U.S. hegemony by empowering rivals that exemplify those models and by making dissenting elites in a client state more hostile to U.S. hegemony; thus they make free elections riskier for Washington. When these two conditions coincide, a new bargain emerges: dissenting elites pledge to participate in the U.S.-sponsored regional order, and Washington forces free elections. We test our argument against two cases of fraudulent elections in a U.S. authoritarian client, namely the Philippines in 1978 and in 1986. In 1978 communism’s high credibility in Southeast Asia forced Jimmy Carter to continue supporting the Marcos dictatorship. In 1986 communism’s lack of credibility allowed Ronald Reagan to drop Marcos and sponsor democracy. We conclude that America’s ambivalence about democracy in the Muslim world today owes much to the lack of credibility of U.S.-style capitalist liberal democracy in Muslim societies.

Why has Mexico shifted from a defecting free-rider on the international trading system to a conceding free-trader? An analytical model of bargaining between asymmetric players is developed to show how cooperation can be achieved through the strategic use of side payments. Mexico made concessions beyond the conventional agenda of trade negotiations (liberalizing investment rules, financial services, intellectual property rights, labor and environmental standards) in an effort to alter the payoff for the United States, and thereby create a game with a more optimal solution for both countries. Market liberalization between Mexico and the United States is analyzed over three periods (the 1980 GATT decision, GATT accession in 1986, and NAFTA and supplemental negotiations in 1991-3), and changes are identified leading to different types of games. The model achieves two results — (1) it helps explain the shift in Mexican policy from nationalism to liberalization, and (2) it shows how side payments can be used as part of a strategy of game change.

By synthesizing material forces with ideational forces more organically via a social evolutionary approach, we advance a deeper understanding about post-World War II American military interventionism. We argue that post-World War II American military interventionism — that is, the American elites’ and public’s support for America’s military intervention abroad — cannot be understood with ideational or psychological forces alone. Rather, two crucial material variables, namely, geography and aggregate power amplified by superior technological prowess, are indispensable for understanding the propensity for the United States to intervene militarily abroad. These two factors have powerfully shielded the American elites and public from the horrendous devastation of war. As a result, compared to their counterparts in other major states, American citizens and elites have tended to be less repelled by the prospect of war. The outcome is that since World War II the United States has been far more active in military intervention overseas than other major states.

Utilising critical realist philosophy of social science, this article contends that discourse may be studied as a causal mechanism in the generation of events — and one relationally connected to mechanisms of differing kinds. To do this, it is argued that we should adopt critical discourse analysis rather than the guidance of poststructuralist discourse theory. After establishing the key assumptions of poststructuralist discourse theory, some of the substantive analytical tendencies that secrete are discussed and illustrated through a look at the treatment of humanitarian discourse in the International Relations literature on the nature of Western warfare. The article then places discourse within a critical realist view of the social world. I argue that unlike in poststructuralist discourse theory, with critical realism, discourse can be differentiated from the realm of extra-discursive practice, placed in dialectical relation to this wider realm of social relations, and analysed as a possible causal mechanism in the generation of social phenomena, alongside these other mechanisms, as a way to better determine discourse’s actual effect on events. critical discourse analysis is introduced as offering an amenable methodological tool-kit for studying discourse as conceptualised in this way.

How can the understandings of world historians about the critical changes in the international system be brought into harmony with the way IR theorists think about system change? One of the main obstacles to this task is Waltz's conception of structure, particularly his much criticized elimination of functional differentiation of units in anarchy. Until this flaw is corrected, the theory remains fundamentally incoherent, having misguidedly sacrificed rigour for parsimony. Waltz cannot defend both his exclusive anarchy-hierarchy dyad as the first tier of structure, and the closure of the second tier, against attacks by Ruggie, Watson and Deudney. While the anarchy-hierarchy formulation of deep structure is defensible, the closure of the second tier is not. Both on theoretical and historical grounds, anarchy is compatible with differentiation of units — there is more than one type of anarchic international system. Neorealism therefore gives a partial and Eurocentric view of international systems, and cannot sustain its transhistorical claim. With carefully specified definitions for functional and structural differentiation of units, it is possible to retain a coherent, and still quite parsimonious, theory that is capable of encompassing all of the known manifestations of international systems. Only with such modifications is it possible to address the significant systemic transformations both ancient and modern that now pass unnoticed through the broad mesh of the neorealist net.

This article attempts to situate the approach to World War I within the context of the uneven and combined development of 19th-century European capitalism. Through a comparative analysis of German and British development within the context of the epochal transition from feudalism to capitalism, the article proposes that existing historical materialist and Realist understandings of the roots of World War 1 are inadequate. Realist analyses, stressing the primacy of ‘geopolitics’, fail to provide a convincing explanation of the precise origins of German bellicosity. Instead they assume that expansionist German behaviour was an inevitable consequence of systemic anarchy. Historical materialist accounts, preferring a sociological explanation, overstate the importance of systemic capitalist crisis and the European-wide escalation of class struggle for understanding the genesis of the war. Utilizing Trotsky’s concept of uneven and combined development, I contend, enables a more comprehensive understanding of the origins of the conflict.

Notions of 'sovereignty as responsibility' and 'the responsibility to protect' are often fra-med as radical departures from the 'traditional' conception of sovereignty. Many assume that sovereignty has, until recently, entailed only rights and not responsibilities. In con-trast, this article argues that sovereign authority has been understood to involve varied and evolving responsibilities since it was first articulated in the 16th and 17th centuries. It then traces the historical emergence of the tension between the right of sovereign states to be self-governing and free from outside interference and their responsibility to secure the safety of their populations. It cautions against a simplified story of 'traditional' sovereignty which reifies supposedly concrete and ahistorical rights of sovereigns while casting sovereign responsibilities as a morally abstract and late-arriving challenge. Yes Yes