Alexander Astrov

• Central European University

Drawing on the empirical case of the Russian-Georgian war of 2008, the book explores the theoretical underpinnings of the idea of 'great power management' first articulated within the English School of International Relations. The contributors to the volume approach this idea from a variety of theoretical perspectives, ranging from policy-analysis...

The intensification of historical politics in Estonia is the result of an identity crisis, caused in part by the country's successful completion of the European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) accession processes. The author argues that the interpretation of the "struggle against totalitarianism" offered by the French "new...

The author argues that the relocation of the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn was not a provocation intentionally staged by Estonian authorities but rather the result of efforts by the Estonian government to depoliticize the monument by diminishing its public significance and removing it to an area of private commemoration.

This book outlines an idea of world politics as an activity of thinking and speaking about the conditions of world order. World order is understood not as an arrangement of entities but a complex of variously situated activities conducted by individuals as members of diverse associations of their own. Within contemporary International Relations it...

In this book, I outline an idea of world politics as a distinct activity of thinking and speaking about the conditions of world order in terms of their desirability. World order is understood not as an arrangement of entities, be they humans, states or civilizations, but a complex of variously situated activities, including individuals as members o...

The previous chapter outlined two different modes of contemplation and action. In the first mode, both are powered by the ‘mill-race’ of the individual consciousness. In the second, human practices are likened to the ‘dry wall’ composed of contingently related occurrences. In both cases, politics is concerned with the possibility of change, while c...

The task now is to relate Oakeshott’s analysis of human conduct to that of international society so as to arrive at an idea of world politics. The classical approach, while enlisting the support of Oakeshott for the defence of its version of international society against the international system of rationalism, also distances itself from the ‘criti...

The idea of politics presented so far opens up a possibility for the discussion of world politics but as yet cannot be directly followed up by it. The possibility is open because politics is not tied conceptually to any entity. It is meaningful mostly in relation to the choice between two distinct conditions, enterprise and civil associations (Oake...

I have outlined an idea of tradition as a conversation between two modes of inquiry, practice and history, in terms of which conduct inter homines can be understood. Conversation is not a formally structured mode of understanding, like history or practice themselves, but an engagement pointing towards the absolute presuppositions of the condition o...

Politics is a kind of human activity. Few, if any, would seriously quarrel with this. To understand any human activity, Oakeshott once told his students, is ‘to discern the character of the activity itself and not merely to classify its products’; that is, to establish the place of a given activity ‘on the map of human activity in general’ (HL 15)....

This thesis outlines an idea of world politics as a distinct activity of thinking and speaking about the overall conditions of world order in terms of their desirability. World order is understood not as an arrangement of entities, be they humans, states or civilizations, but a complex of variously situated activities conducted by individuals as me...

What is the status of politics in International Relations (IR)? Is it a manifold of political activities in the world or a single activity of ordering the world? What is the relation between world-order and world-politics? The article examines three recent contributions to various approaches within IR and highlights the distinction, implicitly pres...