John H.S. Åberg

• PhD in Political Science
• Lecturer at Malmö University

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing debate about “Chinese assertiveness”. The paper dissects the central articles on the topic and evaluates their conceptual and theoretical insights. It ascertains that the concept of assertiveness is poorly substantiated; that proponents of “Chinese assertiveness” largely claim that it derives fr...

There is a widespread feeling that globalization represents a major system change that has or should have brought world society to the forefront of international relations theory. Nonetheless, world society remains an amorphous and undertheorized concept, and its potential role in shaping the structure of the international society of states has sca...

China’s economic success has prompted both academic political economists and applied policy analysts to speculate about the implications of a new ‘China model’ of economic development and global economic governance. A particular issue is the degree to which the China model involves developing in opposition to or in cooperation with the pre-existing...

Despite vociferous disagreement by scholars and ambivalence by China over a “China Model” of development, China is still held up as an exemplar of development. Nowhere is this clearer than in the theory of New Structural Economics (NSE) promulgated by the former Chief Economist of the World Bank, Justin Lin. We seek to critically engage Lin's theor...

This paper seeks to reconcile performative theorizing, which captures the place of systems of thought on foreign policy practice, and broader sociological approaches that link networks and institutions across space, especially as they relate to the global economy. Once developed, the theory, which is termed here ‘spatial performativity’, is applied...

In this essay I reflect on the problem of authority in the doctoral supervision process. It is the role of the supervisor to prepare, guide, and teach the doctoral student how to take on the academic world and become a good social scientist. To this end, I argue for a hierarchical teacher-student relationship as it leads to unambiguous role expecta...

Recent calls to study international practices stand out for their attempts to bridge the material ideational divide, viewing international relations as a realm of competent acts engendering the international system. Foreign policy, as a bureaucratic enterprise of protocol and institutional practices, is the ideal ground to assess the value of pract...

With the Corona crisis another chapter was written in the biopolitical book of life. During the last two years, we have observed an unprecedented level of irrationality and political ill will in dealing with the pandemic. Vaccine mandates, vaccine apartheid, lockdowns, masking of schoolchildren, and ensuing restrictions on our freedom of assembly a...

This introductory article examines the concept of strategic localization, which is central to the theme of this Special Issue of Politics & Policy . We focus on how African states, for regime survival and/or pragmatic reasons, reinterpret China's development discourse and preferences and implement them in their local contexts. We hypothesize that t...

Is Sweden a failed state in the making or a paradise on earth? Neither. Sweden is a functioning democracy but it faces serious challenges. This article attempts to make sense of them. It considers issues of law and order and the emergence of parallel structures of power. It shows that Sweden, following an unprecedented wave of immigration, is exper...

The tentative argument made in this article is that “failed states” have failed to develop successful projects of internal colonialism. Yet, in the present era, human rights norms and world society governance models denounce states that pursue internal colonial projects. This paradox highlights the great challenge of state making in the present age...

The article scrutinizes Armenia's foreign policy trajectory since its independence. It applies a model of foreign policy analysis that takes into account structural, dispositional, and intentional dimensions and outlines a more dynamic structure-agency interplay. By contrast to reductionist system-level explanations, the argument is that individual...