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Abstract
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2346.2009.00778.x Hegemony suffers from a bad press. It is currently used to refer simply to United States primacy. Thus presented, the US is considered to have been hegemonic since 1945, or at least since 1990. Instead, hegemony is presented here as a legitimate institution of international society in which special rights and responsibilities are conferred on the hegemon. No such hegemony exists at present. However, given today's constellation of power, a circumscribed US hegemony potentially has a distinctive contribution to make to contemporary international order. To map out such a hegemonic institution, this article reviews some historical precedents. It finds that, rather than uniform, these have taken a variety of forms, especially with respect to the scope of the legitimacy and constituency within which they have operated. A scheme of hegemonies - singular, collective and coalitional - is set out as a more realistic way of thinking about hegemony's present potential. There are three problems in how the idea of hegemony is conventionally deployed with regard to the current international order. First, even those who think it a good thing (mainly using residual variants of Hegemonic Stability Theory [HST]) concede that hegemony is decreasingly sustainable in emerging conditions. Second, only those who think hegemony thoroughly malign consider it to have a durable future. Third, both sides hold an unquestioned assumption that there is a single model of hegemony: whether it is benign or malign, we all at least agree on what the beast looks like. All three of these entrenched positions have led to a distorted and impoverished discussion of the potential of hegemony. This article reviews the muddled state of the hegemony debate, stakes out a positive case on behalf of hegemony, and does so by revisiting the historical precedents to establish its subtly diverse institutional forms.
... Ayrıca, hegemonyayı genellikle insan ilişkilerinde kızgınlık, reddedilme ve ortadan kaldırılma durumu olarak ifade etmiştir. Ian Clark (2009'den aktaran Knight, 2014, Uluslararası İlişkiler literatüründe hegemon teriminin güç yoğunlaşması ile ilişkili ve üstünlük (primacy) kavramından çok daha geniş anlamı olduğunu belirtmiştir. Üstünlük (primacy) kavramı öncelikle maddi gücün kazanılmasına odaklanırken, hegemonya kavramı ise, statüsünün meşruluğu, lider devlete olan bağlılığın teminine ve ikincil devletlerin gönüllü ya da zorlayıcı olmayan rızasının sağlanmasına yoğunlaştığını ifade etmiştir. ...
... Hegemonya, hegemon devletin sahip olduğu kapasiteye bağlı olarak ortaya çıkan bir statü olmayıp, başkaları tarafından bahşedilen ve onlar tarafından tanınmaya dayanan bir statüdür (Schmidt, 2018). Clark (2009: 24'ten aktaran Schmidt, 2018 hegemonyayı önderlik edecek kaynaklara sahip bir devlete tanınan özel hak ve sorumlulukların kurumsallaşmış bir uygulaması olarak tanımlar. Anlaşıldığı üzere, İngiliz Okulu hegemonya kavramında vurguyu, hegemon devlet üzerinden değil, uluslararası yapının diğer aktörlerinin hegemon varlığa atfedilebilecek sosyal tanıma olgusu üzerinden yapmaktadır. ...
The purpose of this study is to analyze how America, which is in decline in its global dominance, is affected by the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus. For this purpose, the study will be conducted in four parts. In the first part, a theoretical literature review will be done on hegemony and global leadership. In the second part, the general development process of the global leadership of the USA will be examined; in the third part, the extent to which the global epidemic has affected the USA will be examined. In the last part, a general analysis, including China, will be presented. In summary, the USA is in a period of decline in terms of global leadership due to historical, economic and political reasons. However, although the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic affected the USA negatively, the global epidemic did not significantly change the USA's current global dominancy.
... However, in the post-Soviet era, one country controls gas supply (Russia), while the other one (Ukraine) both relies on that supply and has a significant influence on its delivery to important export customers. This resulted in two major conflicts in Russia-EU natural gas relations in 2006and 2009(Henderson, 2015. As a result, Europe considers dependency upon Russian gas as a threat also because of the Ukraine-Russia conflict in recent years. ...
... Superpowers seek to maximize their share of global power using different measures, such as the economy, military, and diplomacy, to change the power balance in their own favor using whatever means they have at their disposal. Many realists have argued that all states would like to become hegemons and many scholars suggest that the US or the West in general achieved this status (Clark, 2009) triggering an initially candid, but gradually more and more open confrontation, as the rivals are compelled to take preemptive action to prevent the growth of the power gap (Astrov, 2011;Walt, 1985). The most obvious way to do that is to protect one's sphere of influence in order to ensure that the opponent does not become overpowering. ...
The article studies the role of energy resources in the annexation of Crimea by the Russian government. Russian justification that this action was taken to protect Russian ethnicity, as declared with the “referendum”, can be challenged in the light of the realist balance of power concept. According to the research, Russia considered Ukraine’s improving relations with the West as a threat and tried to eliminate it with preemptive action, in order to reestablish regional balance of power with the West. The article finds that the energy factor had a significant role in this consideration but in a subtractive approach. More precisely, there were no major incentives for Russia to capture the Black Sea resources intrinsically, but these reserves were recognized as part of the main Ukrainian economic empowerment plan, particularly on the EU’s future energy market. Thus, Russia tried to block Ukraine’s access to them in line with a wedge strategy. Hence, the annexation can be considered as one part of Russian energy policy towards the EU and Russia’s goal to emasculate Ukraine’s natural gas transit role by constructing new pipelines such as Nord Stream and Turkish Stream, as the other part.
The study exemplifies how Ukraine’s strategic position has been significantly diminished from the energy perspective.
... Ultimately, Bgreat powers may be thought to contribute to international order by agreeing, not upon a division of the world into spheres of influence, interest or responsibility, but to join forces in promoting common policies throughout the international system as a whole^( [17], p. 218), e.g. by setting international agendas. That is the underlying premise of Clark's [21] conceptualisation of the US, but can also be inferred from Nye's [18]. ...
... The analysis of FATF evolution indicates a tendency for the 'privatisation of control' or 'the emergence of private authority in global governance' [11] that has favoured the participation of the private sector (financial institutions in particular although FinTech companies are now getting involved too) in the making of standards ( [72,73], p. 204). 21 Interview with IFI official, April 2013. 22 Ibid. ...
The international fight against money laundering illustrates changes in global governance as a result of the increasingly cross-border nature of crime and the need it creates for all involved to cooperate. The economic priorities and security concerns that surround it contributed to the strong evolution of global governance in this area and the status of anti-money laundering as a shared problem. The creation of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), its expansion and cementation throughout the years, is a good example of the many forces working together to responding to the demands of emerging criminal threats and trends. It offers a good illustration of how relationships in global governance have influenced FATF’s priorities and action and ultimately the way in which illicit financial flows are tackled. This analysis offers an overview of FATF’s network across time taking into account the role of states, international organisations, and the private sector in the decision-making processes. It argues that Great Powers – a small, but aligned, group of states of global economic relevance – are responsible for FATF’s direction and the international efforts against illicit financial flows. It suggests, however, that unlike what could be expected, their power is declining following the rise of private sector influence through resourceful, organised and transnational actions e.g. on information sharing.
... A number of 'structural approaches' inspired by the English School (Clark 2009(Clark , 2011, critical realism (Joseph 2000(Joseph , 2002 and Gramscian analysis (Joseph 2002(Joseph , 2008Saull 2012) have attempted to cure these weaknesses. ...
... Within the English school, Clark (2009Clark ( , 2011 has attempted to move the concept of hegemony from a narrow, agential, material understanding based on primacy and the distribution of capabilities within the international system, towards its function as a primary institution of the international society, i.e. a social structure made possible by its legitimisation from the very members of this society. Along these lines he argues (2009, 24) that hegemony: ...
The paper interrogates the current state of the art in hegemony analysis in international relations (IR). First, I discuss the limitations of using IR theories as a point of departure for analysing the phenomenon of hegemony in world politics. Second, I identify the ‘agent-structure problematique’ and ‘critical realism’ as two different waves of hegemony theorising and examine their contributions and limitations. Then I offer an outline of how we can move beyond the current state of the art, in order to develop a more comprehensive framework of analysing hegemony. Focusing on the multiple movements of power within a hegemonic order, the paper advances a conceptualisation of hegemony as a complex power ecology—a dynamic order that draws on multiple and conflicting social forces and temporalities, which, in the final analysis, denote an existential battle for determining desire and the meaning of life.
... John Mearsheimer's offensive realism argues that the pursuit of global hegemony by great powers is the way to guarantee their security and freedom of action [9]. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the United States, the sole global superpower, was in a unipolar moment in the early 21st century, enjoying unprecedented material resource dominance [10]. But after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, people began to question whether the United States could continue to maintain its hegemony. ...
More than 20 years have passed since the 9/11 attacks, and people from all walks of life have conducted extensive discussions and research on the event. These discussions involve multiple fields, especially analyzing this historical event within the framework of international relations theory. Therefore, this paper will analyze the three major international relations theories of realism, liberalism, and constructivism, and determine which theory is most suitable for explaining the background, impact, and subsequent development of the 9/11 attacks. Specifically, this paper will argue that realism is the most appropriate theory as it emphasizes the role of national security and power, and can explain the tough military response taken by the United States after the 9/11 attacks. Meanwhile, this paper will also briefly explain why liberalism and constructivism are not suitable for analyzing the 9/11 attacks. Through this comparative analysis, this paper aims to reveal the unique advantages of realism in understanding and interpreting the 9/11 attacks.
... This is especially true of most hegemonic stability literature. This is also consistent with classical realist and English School studies of the balance of power system and other minimalist global institutions (Gilpin 1981;Kindleberger 1986;Bull 1977;Bull & Watson 1984;Clark 2009;Goddard & Nexon 2016). It is also a common theme in the current work on hierarchies. ...
... The world hegemony theory is a set of schools that share the assumption of the primacy of one state over the others in ancient, modern, and contemporary international systems. Clark (2009) distinguished two versions, the hegemonic stability theory and the Gramsci's hegemony theory. Kindleberger (1981), who developed the former one, demonstrated that one state is the hegemon of the world in so far as it provides the public goods the other states eagerly ask for. ...
Umberto Gori is an eminent representative of the first wave of international studies in Italy. Throughout the past decades he has constantly been engaged in a number of research projects – ranging from international organization to the theory of international relations, from strategic studies to forecasting – and has taught not only at the University of Florence but also at many other Italian and foreign institutions. The present collection of essays is meant to celebrate his outstanding career. The contributors are students of his who, in turn, have followed his path in teaching and research, and who acknowledge an intellectual debt to him. The volume is arranged according to three general themes that are consistent with Gori’s interests: the competitive and cooperative dimensions of the international system; foreign policy and regional governance; the contemporary international order.
... The world hegemony theory is a set of schools that share the assumption of the primacy of one state over the others in ancient, modern, and contemporary international systems. Clark (2009) distinguished two versions, the hegemonic stability theory and the Gramsci's hegemony theory. Kindleberger (1981), who developed the former one, demonstrated that one state is the hegemon of the world in so far as it provides the public goods the other states eagerly ask for. ...
The life cycle of the American world order has entered the transition mode. The number and severity of world-wide problems is increasing. Multilateralism, after the Second World War the way of responding to these problems, meets the mistrust of policy makers and experts. Understanding how such developments interlock one another will widen our knowledge about the future of the world polity. In the first section of the present chapter, the spotlight is on the current order transition or interregnum, the Gramsci’s concept recently reused by social scientists to underline the little knowledge available about such theme. The second section draws attention to multilateralism as the fit-for-purpose way of responding to collective, world-scale problems, problems generated and perpetuated by the structure of the international system, sovereignty included, that are widespread over the entire planet.
... Primacy in the other hand depicts nothing beyond a distribution of power in which one state enjoys predominance. Corroborating the assertion of Clark (2009), power is central to international relations and it is the key determinant which verifies hegemonic power both at the regional and global levels. The consonant of his assertion to the current reality of the contemporary international politics can be questioned for a major reason; hegemon may not necessarily emerge through legitimacy but through the provision of leadership coupled with the display of force, where followers are left with no option; as evident in the post-Cold War international politics. ...
Nigeria’s claim as the giant of Africa is evident in her foreign policy articulation of African Centre Piece. From 1960, Nigeria has championed the project of Africa through different diplomatic engagements across the continent of Africa most especially under President Olusegun Obasanjo’s civilian administration. Nigeria’s unwavering support against the apartheid regime in South Africa led to the termination of apartheid government in 1994. However, the post- apartheid politics in Africa as well as the post-Cold War politics changed the dynamics of African politics. Nigeria’s claim as the giant of Africa became more contested and hypothetical with the emergence of notable countries such as Ethiopia and South Africa posing serious challenges to Nigeria’s hegemony in the continent. The most viable and notable threats came from South Africa following the end of apartheid regime in South Africa and coupled with its good governance rating, which had heightened the status of the country as a notable continental leader. This article attempts to explain the leadership roles of Nigeria and South Africa in a peripheral region of Africa with the view of analysing who has the sway to lead the affairs of Africa to the path of prosperity. Through the secondary method of data collection and qualitative method of data analysis (discourse analysis), the study concludes that Nigeria and South Africa roles in Africa were motivated by realist considerations. The study, however, recommends concerted efforts between Nigeria and South Africa in addressing socio-economic challenges in the African continent.
... The theory of the present analysis is the world hegemony theory, which is not a uniform set of assumptions and propositions but a family of approaches sharing the same explanatory perspective towards the empirical study of the world power and political authority. Clark (2009) distinguished two versions of this theory, the Hegemonic stability theory and the Gramsci's hegemony theory, but the family of the hegemony theorists extends to specialists of other versions. Kindleberger (1981), the economic historian that developed the Hegemonic stability theory, argued that one state acts as the hegemon as it provides the public goods that instil the compliance of many states with the rules of order that serve the interests of the same hegemonic state. ...
... The theory of the present analysis is the world hegemony theory, which is not a uniform set of assumptions and propositions but a family of approaches sharing the same explanatory perspective towards the empirical study of the world power and political authority. Clark (2009) distinguished two versions of this theory, the Hegemonic stability theory and the Gramsci's hegemony theory, but the family of the hegemony theorists extends to specialists of other versions. Kindleberger (1981), the economic historian that developed the Hegemonic stability theory, argued that one state acts as the hegemon as it provides the public goods that instil the compliance of many states with the rules of order that serve the interests of the same hegemonic state. ...
The world has passed through the initial phase of implementation of the primary policies of the American world order and the following phase of de-legitimation of such policies, the trade, finance and security policy. Though many states have been socialized to the policies of the American hegemony, the de-legitimation of the American order has been growing because especially the trade and finance world policies have not been apt to face the demands of individual states and to respond to the problems of the whole system. The world is now in the transition process that will run across the coalition reconfiguration and macro-decision phase. In the current transition, three world powers, the United States, China and Russia, have potentials to lead the process by proposing the revision of the existing order and by assembling countries into the coalition able to build the new order. Transition is an open process to go through and to observe carefully. The revisionism of the three world powers is confirmed by the analysis while they are still unable to assemble the demands of large groups of states and build the coalition of the next world order.
... Importantly, American news media frames are often replicated in the news media of other countries (Chang, Lau & Xiaoming, 2000). As a result, dependence on American news sources, such as Associated Press and The New York Times, has reinforced the United States' status as a global hegemon (Clark, 2009;Mearsheimer, 2014). In a study of cross-cultural frame transfers, Galander (2012) found that stereotyped portrayals of Muslims in Western media were disseminated to Muslim publics because the level of Muslim proximity between Darfur and the West was very large, but there were few other alternatives to Western news. ...
... Yet it is still riddled with the hegemonic/hierarchical practices and inequalities of status left over from its founding process and largely favouring great powers in particular and the West in general. 2 Simpson's (2004) work has a lot to say about this tension over the last two centuries, providing a useful link between English School concerns and international law. Clark (2009aClark ( , 2009b has tackled this problem with an argument that hegemony can be a primary institution of international society. This in turn picks up the dissatisfaction of Wight and Watson,noted in chapter 4,about wanting the British Committee to explore hegemonic international societies. ...
... He strongly argues that hegemony is "a status bestowed by others, and rests on recognition by them" and is meant as "an institutionalized practice of special rights and responsibilities conferred on a state with the resources to lead" (Clark, 2009, p. 24). Seen from the perspective of "international society", which views hegemony as a condition of legitimate leadership within international society, the idea of American hegemony is unachievable in contemporary international order (Buzan, 2008(Buzan, , 2011Clark, 2009). However, some of the hardcore US elites still firmly believe that US hegemony will remain unchallenged and unchanged, as the former US national advisor Thomas Donilon declaims "We're No. 1 (and We're Going to Stay That Way)" (Donilon, 2014). ...
Since the late 1990s, and especially in the new millennium, the world has been witnessing the dramatic rise of China, together with several large developing countries — Brazil, Russia, India — and many other countries that are labeled as the “Second World” (Khanna, 2012). In the current era of globalization and transnational capitalism, the ascendance of these emerging powers has redefined international relations (IR) and the international political economy (IPE) of upward mobility among the core, semi-periphery and periphery countries — a three-level hierarchy understanding of the world economic system as seen in world-system theory (Wallerstein, 1979, 2004). Furthermore, in concrete terms, the rise of new powers is affecting a number of global relationships — this includes those between great powers, the global South and developing countries — and new patterns of regionalization and regionalism are being generated.
Tüketim, modern toplumlarda sadece ekonomik bir faaliyet olarak değil, aynı zamanda bireylerin kimliklerini ve statülerini inşa ettikleri ve bunları ifade ettikleri bir alan olarak görülmektedir. Gezegenin her yerine yayılan ve akın eden tüketimci piyasanın hâkimi markalar, sahip oldukları güç ile toplumda ya da uluslararası sistemde egemen olmasını istediği değerleri çeşitli kurumlar ve aydınlar üzerinden aktararak kendilerine bağımlı kesimlerin zihinsel ve yapısal sınırları üzerinde tahakküm kurmaya çalışmaktadır. Elbette kapitalist üretim/dağıtım sisteminin yerinde durmak bilmeyen faaliyetlerini devam ettiren markalar için asıl amaç, kitlelerin gönüllü (rıza) olarak kendilerine itaat etmesini sağlayabilmek, mevcut kurulu düzene karşı isyanları en aza indirebilmek ve olası rakipleri bertaraf edebilmektir. Gerçekleştirilen nitel araştırmada, tüketim kültürünün inşasında markaların hegemonyası incelenmiş ve “tüketim kültürünün inşasında markaların hegemonyasını nasıl sağladığının ve markaların, tüketimi reklamlarda nasıl inşa ettiğinin ortaya koyulması amaçlanmaktadır. Bu amaç etrafında araştırma evrenini “Effie Awards” reklamları oluştururken araştırmanın örneklemini ise 2023 yılı “Effie Awards Türkiye”de farklı kategorilerde ödüle değer bulunan reklam filmleri oluşturmaktadır. Çalışmada markaların hegemonyalarını sağlarken güç unsuru içerisinde yer alan kültür ve bilgiyi ve rakip unsurlar içerisinde yer alan eşsizliği önemli ölçüde kullandığı sonucuna ulaşılmıştır. Ayrıca markaların reklamlarda tüketim kültürünü, tüketimin sembolik boyutu, mutluluk-haz, çekicilik, kolaylık ve tarz temalarıyla inşa etme noktasında önemli bir rol oynadığı tespit edilmiştir.
Abstracts
The Russo–Ukraine War raises important questions on the dynamics of regional leadership and followership in what may be termed “Russian-led Eurasia.” These questions, in particular, the strength of Russian leadership in the region is complicated by the ambiguity in existing literature and competing images of Russia's relations with long-standing allies—notably Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan—which are often portrayed in terms of a “community of fate” or partners destined for closer integration but also as a “community of fortune” or ad hoc, situational partners, loosely centered on Russia. This article offers an innovative theoretical and methodological exploration of Russia's relations with regional partner states by utilizing the English School of International Relations and regional integration organizations to assess Russia's regional leadership. As argued in this article, Russian-led Eurasia may be understood as an example of a regional interstate society with Russian hegemony serving as a socially conferred, binding institution. But this hegemony is inherently unstable owing to Russia's inability to balance hegemonic “rights” with “responsibilities.” War in Ukraine did not create this problem, but it has created the conditions for leadership transition in the region.
Uluslararası sistemi ve devletlerarası ilişkileri anarşi formülasyonuyla açıklayan uluslararası ilişkiler teorileri son yıllarda ciddi bir meydan okumayla karşı karşıyadır. Bu meydan okumanın öncüsü olan hiyerarşi teorisi devletlerarası ilişkilerin ve dünya politikasının hiyerarşi ve anarşinin birlikte var olduğu melez bir yapıyla yönetildiğini belirtmektedir. İkinci Dünya Savaşı’na kadar sömürge ve imparatorluk şeklindeki resmi hiyerarşik sistemlere ev sahipliği yapan uluslararası arenaya Savaş sonrası dönem itibariyle büyük devletlerin küçük devletlerin egemenliklerini dolaylı yollarla kontrolleri altına aldıkları gayri resmi hiyerarşiler hâkim olmaya başlamıştır. Bu argümanlardan hareket eden hiyerarşi teorisi hiyerarşinin dünya siyasetindeki görünümünü, doğasını, dünya politikası ve aktörler üzerindeki etkilerini ortaya çıkarmak için ilişkisel otorite (relational authority) kavramını geliştirmiştir. Bu çalışma hiyerarşiyi, egemen devletlerarasında gerçekleştirilen pazarlıklar sonucunda inşa edilen bir ast-üst ilişkisi olarak tanımlayan ve literatürde kurumsal hiyerarşi (institutional hierarchy) teorisi olarak da isimlendirilen bu kavramın güçlü yönlerini ve sınırlarını araştırmaktadır. Bu amaçla çalışma kurumsal hiyerarşi teorisinin argümanlarına değindikten sonra bu argümanların üç güçlü yönünü ve beş temel sınırını tespit etmektedir.
Barry Buzan proposes a new approach to making International Relations a truly global discipline that transcends both Eurocentrism and comparative civilisations. He narrates the story of humankind as a whole across three eras, using its material conditions and social structures to show how global society has evolved. Deploying the English School's idea of primary institutions and setting their story across three domains - interpolity, transnational and interhuman - this book conveys a living historical sense of the human story whilst avoiding the overabstraction of many social science grand theories. Buzan sharpens the familiar story of three main eras in human history with the novel idea that these eras are separated by turbulent periods of transition. This device enables a radical retelling of how modernity emerged from the late 18th century. He shows how the concept of 'global society' can build bridges connecting International Relations, Global Historical Sociology and Global/World History.
Bu çalışma, Çin’in Ortadoğu politikasını İran ve Suudi Arabistan ile ilişkileri üzerinden açıklamaktadır. Çalışmanın temel argümanı, Çin’in Ortadoğu politikasının küresel bir hegemonya elde etme amacıyla değil bölgedeki mevcut hegemon ile iş birliğine ve çatışmadan kaçınmaya dayandığıdır. Argümanı desteklemek üzere J. Abu Lughod tarafından geliştirilen “karşılıklı bağımlı hegemon güçler” teorisi ele alınmış, Suudi Arabistan ve İran ile ilişkiler karşılaştırmalı şekilde yorumlanmıştır. Lughod, 21. yüzyıl dünya düzeninin sisteme hâkim tek bir egemen gücün olmadığı, bunun yerine birkaç çekirdek gücün bir arada var olabildiği bir görünüm arz edeceğini öngörmektedir. Elde edilen bulgulara göre Çin’in Ortadoğu politikası, küresel sistemdeki çekirdek güçlerden birisi olarak bölgenin mevcut hegemon gücüyle bir arada var olmaya dayanmaktadır.
This chapter develops a novel neoclassical realist explanatory model which links international structural and domestic process variables to explain international order building and revisionism. States try to build external orders that allow them to thrive as historically grown entities with multidimensional security needs (territorial, ontological, political, economic, and normative). The chapter deducts that revisionism is a strategic choice. States turn revisionist if the international status quo threatens their vital security needs and if they have the means to challenge it—either by undermining the status quo from a position of weakness (“destructive revisionism”) or by seeking to redefine it from a position of strength (“constructive revisionism”).
It is true that any long-term analysis poses significant challenges, namely the need to accommodate divergent explanations. Recent decades witnessed a remarkable growth in the Chinese economy. The centre of gravity of economic activities, namely industrial production, shifted in its dynamism from the Atlantic axis to the Pacific. One might ask whether these events are likely to lead to the end of unipolarity, and if so, what might be the contours of a new system. If so, the global impact might certainly involve a transformation of the entire system. We discuss the empirical evidence of the trends and patterns of recent Chinese economy evolution, in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative. It is considered a simple duopoly model with network externalities. New consumers can enter the market each period, depending on the value of the products on players’ reputation and the size of the network.KeywordsHegemony and game changersBelt and Road InitiativeTFP growthConvergenceNetwork externalities
This chapter discusses different IR theories and its approaches to the concept of power; accordingly, this chapter tries to find out why the school of constructivism could be the proper approach for studying China and India’s soft power on Iran. Secondly, this chapter debates how mainstream IR theories and theory of soft power see the rise of China and India’s tangible and intangible powers, and finally, this chapter emphasizes and examines the “soft power” theory by Joseph S. Nye (1990a), which is the main theory employed for analyzing this book.
Bringing together some of the most innovative scholars in both the English School of international relations and East Asian studies, this volume investigates whether or not significant and distinct international social structures exist at the regional level represented by 'East Asia', and what this can tell us about international society both regionally and globally. The book's main finding is that the regional dispute over how its states and peoples should relate to the Western-dominated global international society makes the existence of East Asian international society essentially contested. While this regional-global social dynamic is present in many regions, it is particularly strong in East Asia. This book will appeal to audiences interested in developing English School theory, the study of East Asian international relations and comparative regionalism.
Bringing together some of the most innovative scholars in both the English School of international relations and East Asian studies, this volume investigates whether or not significant and distinct international social structures exist at the regional level represented by 'East Asia', and what this can tell us about international society both regionally and globally. The book's main finding is that the regional dispute over how its states and peoples should relate to the Western-dominated global international society makes the existence of East Asian international society essentially contested. While this regional-global social dynamic is present in many regions, it is particularly strong in East Asia. This book will appeal to audiences interested in developing English School theory, the study of East Asian international relations and comparative regionalism.
Bringing together some of the most innovative scholars in both the English School of international relations and East Asian studies, this volume investigates whether or not significant and distinct international social structures exist at the regional level represented by 'East Asia', and what this can tell us about international society both regionally and globally. The book's main finding is that the regional dispute over how its states and peoples should relate to the Western-dominated global international society makes the existence of East Asian international society essentially contested. While this regional-global social dynamic is present in many regions, it is particularly strong in East Asia. This book will appeal to audiences interested in developing English School theory, the study of East Asian international relations and comparative regionalism.
Bringing together some of the most innovative scholars in both the English School of international relations and East Asian studies, this volume investigates whether or not significant and distinct international social structures exist at the regional level represented by 'East Asia', and what this can tell us about international society both regionally and globally. The book's main finding is that the regional dispute over how its states and peoples should relate to the Western-dominated global international society makes the existence of East Asian international society essentially contested. While this regional-global social dynamic is present in many regions, it is particularly strong in East Asia. This book will appeal to audiences interested in developing English School theory, the study of East Asian international relations and comparative regionalism.
Bringing together some of the most innovative scholars in both the English School of international relations and East Asian studies, this volume investigates whether or not significant and distinct international social structures exist at the regional level represented by 'East Asia', and what this can tell us about international society both regionally and globally. The book's main finding is that the regional dispute over how its states and peoples should relate to the Western-dominated global international society makes the existence of East Asian international society essentially contested. While this regional-global social dynamic is present in many regions, it is particularly strong in East Asia. This book will appeal to audiences interested in developing English School theory, the study of East Asian international relations and comparative regionalism.
The key aim of this article is to bring role theory and relational hierarchy together
in order to highlight two important causal processes. Firstly, relational structures
determine with whom and how an actor interacts. As significant others are fundamental co-players in role development, this helps us to understand how certain roles
are produced and who gains from this. Secondly, role structures configure social
hierarchies. Roles assign particular functions to actors, and actors who carry out
the more important ‘executive’ functions will not only gain certain prerogatives in
terms of specific actions, but also be granted a privileged social location. This leads
into structural power effects, whereby actors across the order buy into and naturalise roles, creating social authority for some and ensuring acquiescence from others.
This is examined in the context of imperial role-authority order in the Americas dur�ing the Cold War.
What is the relationship between insularity—a state’s separation from other states via large bodies of water—and expansion? The received wisdom, prominent in (though not exclusive to) realist theories, holds that insularity constrains expansion by making conquest difficult. We contend, by contrast, that this received wisdom faces important limits. Focusing on U.S. expansion via means short of conquest, we interrogate the underlying theoretical logics to demonstrate that insular powers enjoy two distinct advantages when it comes to expansion. First, insularity translates into a “freedom to roam”: because insular powers are less threatened at home, they can project more power and influence abroad. Second, insularity “sterilizes” power, which explains why insular powers are seen as attractive security providers and why we do not see more counterbalancing against them. On net, existing scholarship is correct to argue that insularity impedes conquest between great powers. Still, it has missed the ways that insularity abets expansion via spheres of influence abroad. One consequence is an under-appreciation for the role of geography writ large and insularity in particular in shaping contemporary great power behavior.
Regional integration creates a common economic, social, and political space, which is based on interstate dialogue. A common integration space forms the territory of security, since the security sphere is not only to solve specific tasks, but also to create permanent instruments for preventing various risks. The Post-Soviet space remains a complex territory, the states of which have gone through a period of political destabilization, faced various threats, and come to the idea that only collective security mechanisms in the framework of constant cooperation are capable of preventing risks. Therefore, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) is not only an economic project, it is a project that forms a common security space for all participants, and not only for its member states. In this regard, this chapter is structured around two key problems: established conceptual approaches in the field of security in relation to integration processes and tools of the EAEU for the formation of a common and indivisible security space for all its participants.
China aspires to be a regional hegemon in Asia Pacific region—this requires material as well as social factors This paper focuses on how China is utilizing its soft power to gain social legitimacy in the region. Using Joseph Nye's soft power, it argues that China is using its soft power to develop social acceptance for its new desired role in the region. In this vein, China's Belt Road Initiative (BRI) and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) are enhancing China's soft power in Asia Pacific region. The paper employs broader definition of soft power and analyzes all non-military tools used by China in Asia Pacific region.
In recent years, the position of the United States as the superpower par excellence has become increasingly tenuous. This state of affairs is often framed as a function of relative power shifts in the international system, domestic political and cultural travails as well as self-inflicted policy blunders, particularly in the Middle East. Yet, despite these apparent challenges, the United States remains, by most material indicators, the most powerful state in the world. Likewise, the US still possesses a broad global outlook, retains considerable agency in the international arena, and enjoys an extensive menu of policy options.
This dissertation starts from the premise that US foreign policy and international actorness in the unfolding 21st century, indeed the very trappings of America’s international engagement, can still be analysed through the lens of hegemony. In other words, for the time being at least, the US can still be said to play a hegemonic role within the current international order. This role is replete with both the special privileges that have historically been assumed by and granted to materially powerful states with the requisite resources and willingness to lead, as well as the extraordinary responsibilities that befall upon such a leader to sustain international order.
While America’s options and ability to shape the international arena in a manner it deems fit may be more restricted than in the recent past, at least in the short to medium term, the fate of American hegemony is not structurally predetermined by material historical forces. In fact, successful navigation of the treacherous currents of the international, in various regions, domains and issue areas, can lengthen the shadow of American hegemony or, at the very least, shape the international order that emerges after US ascendancy eventually wanes. The converse, of course, is true of failure, which would constitute the inability by the incumbent hegemon to select the “correct” policy course, or unwillingness to articulate and negotiate compelling normative visions of order fit for the changing times. It is the objective of the present study to bring to the fore, in a novel and innovative manner, precisely such difficulties of carrying out a hegemonic role. Specifically, the study pries into the intricacies of hegemonic failure in the early 21st century. It explores whether, in what sense, or to what extent the United States is indeed “failing hegemony”, or can even be seen as being in the process of losing its hegemonic position altogether.
To carry out this task, the present exposition makes a case for bringing the ideational and social foundations of hegemony to the fore without neglecting the notion’s material basis and domestic-political foundations. The conceptual and theoretical discussion is thus built around an original tripartite framework consisting of the material, intrinsic and socio-institutional images of hegemony. This scaffold is complemented by four original publications that offer novel avenues for analyzing the concept of hegemony, in general, and its American manifestation, in particular. Each of the studies endeavours to capture new insights, primarily regarding the ideational and socio-institutional aspects of the US’s global role, and how these possibly contribute to hegemonic failure. The four essays thus mine: (i) the failed visions of order narrated by the American hegemon against the backdrop of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region; (ii) the hegemon’s fraught attempts to manage a pivotal relationship with Egypt through the fostering of trust; (iii) the prospects of increased value divergence within the transatlantic space reflected in American and European articulations of freedom; and (iv) the potentially corrosive ideational contests that unfold within the American body politic over the US hegemonic role, with a particular focus on the promulgation of Donald Trump’s foreign policy doctrine.
Ultimately the theoretical edifice and the original publications speak to the inherent difficulty that the US will inevitably face when it comes to exercising hegemony in an ever more complex world. These challenges are not merely a function of the perceived decline in America’s relative material power or the manifold internal travails that possibly erode the United States’ ability to project power. The prospect of failure also resides in, and may thus spring from, the realm of the social, the ideational, the institutional, and the relational. Hegemony is ultimately also about (domestic) policy ideas that inform a sense of hegemonic purpose; about articulating compelling hegemonic visions of order, embedding them in institutions, and striving to realise them through policy implementation; about managing at times fraught relationships with allies, friends, and even foes; and about the building and nurturing of a shared value base within the hegemonic core. These are insights that theorists of hegemony, not to mention practitioners of foreign policy, ignore at their peril.
Artikkelissa kysymme, voiko kriisin julistamisen ja poikkeuspolitiikan ymmärtää liberaalien demokra-tioiden kontekstissa mahdollisuutena sopeutua ylirajaisiin eksistentiaalisiin uhkiin. Vielä laajemmin ajateltuna pohdimme, voiko kriisinjulistusta tulkita myös epätavanomaisena (demokraattisena) po-litiikkana, joka mahdollistaa muutoksen ja uusiutumisen ja siten vahvistaa resilienssiä, kriisinhal-lintakykyä ja demokratiaa. Entä kuinka liberaali kansainvälinen järjestelmä-jolta puuttuu kyky ja halu julistaa kansainvälinen kriisi-voi sopeutua, oppia ja muuttua uhkan edessä? Rakentamamme teoriakehyksen keskiössä on analyyttinen jaottelu kriisitapahtumaan, kriisiväitteeseen sekä kriisin ju-listukseen, jotka ymmärrämme lähtökohtaisesti poliittisina, sosiaalisina ja retorisina konstruktioina, sekä kriisikokemuksen luoma turvattomuus. Pohdimme, ovatko laajalti hyväksytty kriisiväite sekä yh-teisesti jaettu kriisikokemus edellytyksiä ennakoimattoman hallinnalle ja ontologisen turvallisuuden palauttamiselle. Avainsanat: covid-19, kriisi, liberaali demokratia, ontologinen turvallisuus, turvallistaminen Johdanto Tammikuun 30. päivä 2020 Maailman terveysjärjestö (WHO) totesi tuolloin vielä nimeä-mättömän koronaviruksen olevan "kansainvälinen kansanterveysuhka", tai kirjaimellisemmin käännettynä, "kansainvälinen kansanterveyden hätätila" (engl. Public Health Emergency of International Concern). Nimen SARS-CoV-2 saanut virus ja sen aiheuttama tauti covid-19 levisivät maailmanlaajuisesti. Maaliskuun 11. päivä WHO julisti taudin pandemiaksi. Pan-demian hallitsemiseksi valtiot ja osavaltiot ovat julistaneet hätä-ja poikkeustiloja ottaak-seen käyttöön eriasteisia normaalia liikkuvuutta ja kanssakäymistä koskevia rajoitustoimia. Tarkastelemme tässä artikkelissa näitä reaktioita kriisin julistuksina. Yhdistelemällä kriisin-hallinnan, poliittisen retoriikan, turvallistamisen ja ontologisen turvallisuuden näkökulmia luomme teoreettisen viitekehikon, joka auttaa ymmärtämään koronavirusta ympäröivän krii-sipuheen ja-kokemuksen moninaisuutta. Kehyksen keskiössä on analyyttinen jaottelu krii-sitapahtumaan, kriisiväitteeseen sekä kriisin julistukseen, jotka ymmärrämme lähtökohtaisesti poliittisina, sosiaalisina ja retorisina konstruktioina. Tarkastelukohteenamme ovat "läntiset" liberaalidemokratiat ja niiden kyky vastata yllät-täviin ja ennakoimattomiin uhkiin, jotka vaativat normaalista poikkeavia toimia. Pohdim-me, ovatko laajalti hyväksytty kriisiväite-tulkinta kriisitapahtumasta-sekä yhteisesti jaettu kriisikokemus edellytyksiä ennakoimattoman hallinnalle ja ontologisen turvallisuuden pa-lauttamiselle. Kysymme, voiko kriisin julistamisen ja poikkeuspolitiikan ymmärtää mahdolli-suutena liberaaleille demokratioille sopeutua eikä niinkään uhkana niiden oikeudelliselle ja poliittiselle perustalle. Viemme pohdinnan myös askelta pidemmälle tuomalla esiin näkö-kulman kriisinjulistuksesta demokraattisena epätavanomaisena politiikkana: mahdollisuutena
The world policy-making institutions like the UN, IMF, and WTO are less and less capable of containing violence, maintaining stability, and providing growth to the Global South. Is the world close to the end of the American hegemonic order? Which world order is in the making? The present paper aims at answering to such questions by building the analysis of change of the world political order on the life cycle concept. It draws the four-phase life cycle of the world order from the hegemonic theory school, and explores what caused the decline and de-legitimation of the current order and who discredited the American hegemony. Focus is on the flaws of the world policy-making institutions in responding to political and economic problems of the Global South, and on the increasingly efficacious challenge by China to the United States. In particular, the paper examines whether the Chinese economic power will become the tool for building the anti-American coalition.
Unimensional accounts of revisionism – those that align states along a single continuum from supporting the status quo to seeking a complete overhaul of the international system – miss important variation between a desire to alter the balance of military power and a desire to alter other elements of international order. We propose a two-dimensional property space that generates four ideal types: status-quo actors, who are satisfied with both order and the distribution of power; reformist actors, who are fine with the current distribution of power but seek to change elements of order; positionalist actors, who see no reason to alter the international order but do aim to shift the distribution of power; and revolutionary actors, who want to overturn both international order and the distribution of capabilities. This framework helps make sense of a number of important debates about hegemony and international order, such as the possibility of revisionist hegemonic powers, controversies over the concept of ‘soft balancing’, and broader dynamics of international goods substitution during power transitions.
This chapter investigates the increasing use of social media during a 2012 flare up in armed conflict between Hamas and the state of Israel. Through tweet and counter tweet, Israel, Hamas, and digital recruits engage in a duel as lethal to identity as kinetic projectiles. Internet connected devices such as smartphones have become hostile agents through the republishing of social media content. Such devices and social media content have material affects beyond the geographic battlespace. The advent of Internet connected devices and social media content concomitant with their use during armed conflict by hostiles beyond the geographic battlespace suggest that patterns of conflict are rapidly changing calling into question the notion of hostile, hostile acts, and battlespace. In a social media and smartphone saturated era, who and what counts as hostile (people, smartphones, and tweets) is increasingly ambiguous.
This chapter investigates the increasing use of social media during a 2012 flare up in armed conflict between Hamas and the state of Israel. Through tweet and counter tweet, Israel, Hamas, and digital recruits engage in a duel as lethal to identity as kinetic projectiles. Internet connected devices such as smartphones have become hostile agents through the republishing of social media content. Such devices and social media content have material affects beyond the geographic battlespace. The advent of Internet connected devices and social media content concomitant with their use during armed conflict by hostiles beyond the geographic battlespace suggest that patterns of conflict are rapidly changing calling into question the notion of hostile, hostile acts, and battlespace. In a social media and smartphone saturated era, who and what counts as hostile (people, smartphones, and tweets) is increasingly ambiguous.
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.
Why is there no post-Westphalian world polity today, despite the globalism of recent decades? Is the construction of a world polity an impossible utopia? If it is possible, under what conditions, by what processes, and in what necessary social form? Available visions of a world polity form a debate and world polity formation theories offer limited explanations. In response, this study argues the emergence of a world polity is possible, but is an unlikely and fragile outcome in a late modern context. Two contributions are made to support this argument. First, a new world polity formation theory is developed that explains how systems of polities become single polities. A second contribution advances an account of the historically specific transcivilizational and planetary social form a world polity must necessarily attain if it were to be practically constructed in a late modern context
In this article, we provide a theoretical and empirical evaluation of the argument that China is becoming a hegemonic challenge in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). We argue that, while there is a trend that China has become increasingly dominant in the economic affairs of LAC, the perceived strength of China as a challenger to the U.S. hegemony is shaped by different strategies of Chinese involvement. Focusing on the financing arrangement for infrastructure projects, our case study of the Nicaragua Interoceanic Canal project shows that the challenge that China has posed to the U.S. hegemony might not be as strong as expected. We analyze the controversies revolving around the Canal project and examine how local communities have responded to the project. We conclude that, while the Nicaragua Interoceanic Canal project is ambitious, its success depends on how much support the PRC government and Chinese banks provide and how well the Nicaraguan government addresses the various concerns of the local communities.
This chapter investigates the increasing use of social media during a 2012 flare up in armed conflict between Hamas and the state of Israel. Through tweet and counter tweet, Israel, Hamas, and digital recruits engage in a duel as lethal to identity as kinetic projectiles. Internet connected devices such as smartphones have become hostile agents through the republishing of social media content. Such devices and social media content have material affects beyond the geographic battlespace. The advent of Internet connected devices and social media content concomitant with their use during armed conflict by hostiles beyond the geographic battlespace suggest that patterns of conflict are rapidly changing calling into question the notion of hostile, hostile acts, and battlespace. In a social media and smartphone saturated era, who and what counts as hostile (people, smartphones, and tweets) is increasingly ambiguous.
Can the United States still remain the leading power? Or are the rising powers in fact reshaping the international system? And if the latter, how might the United States behave under bi-/multi-polarity? While most scholars now agree that American primacy is declining, clearly, a distinction needs to be made: in the economic field this does appear to be the case, far less so in the military realm. The loss of economic predominance and, gradually, the ability to maintain a robust global deployment make it not only reasonable but imperative to rethink American grand strategy. The United States stands a better chance of remaining the leader with significant margins of power compared to its challengers if it adopts a defensive realist approach, embracing strategies like selective engagement or offshore balancing. The United States enjoys a twofold advantage compared to the rising powers: a favorable geographical setting and naval primacy. This implies it can project power from the sea to protect its vital interests and to defend regional allies. The United States should therefore: (1) narrow the geographical scope of its vital interests; (2) concentrate only on regions in which it has no one to trust; (3) while backing regional allies in command of their respective regions.
If we compare today’s world with the World(s) from 1914, 1929 or 1939, some similarities occur: multiple powerful actors on the global and regional levels with conflicting interests, economic difficulties of a large number of economies, and the inability of “the international community” to put a stop on the world’s most intense conflicts or rivalries. The Great Recession, which hit the developed, especially European economies the hardest, has shifted more economic power into the direction of emerging economies, thereby accelerating an inevitable economic and political change. Various states have managed to accelerate the change in the distribution of economic wealth. These states, grouped mainly in the BRICS, and in the Next Eleven (N11) have shown, contrary to the Western, “culturally superior” geopolitical thought, that they are neither backward nor incompetent, thereby challenging the developed states. After the paradigm of American Empire, which ended in the worst economic crisis in 70 years, it is time for a new paradigm. Since it would be an illusion to think that multipolarity would be shaped by all the parties concerned, it has to be shaped by those most important. However, the current relations between most powerful states are all but cooperative. The pragmatic relations and the common goals of the BRICS states should not be overestimated. The relations between the USA and the EU, which show a high level of homogeneity because of the Ukrainian crisis, may not in the future be so close. A clear difference would exist between the arranged and the accepted multi-polarity, and a multi-polarity in which one side is not inclined but compelled to accept multipolarity, concurrently limiting its achievements. An approach to the present and the future multipolarity and multipolar world that would be multifarious and multifaceted is therefore a necessity.
The struggle to unify the Islamic peoples under religiously sanctified governance by various competing actors has existed since the death of the Prophet Muhammad. No other individual could contain in the same corpus both religious and temporal authority. These religious political challenges to establish a state that exemplified Islamic principles and could be governed by an ordained official had largely been contained within the Islamic world until the contemporary era. The rise and fall of the major caliphates, competing minor dynasties and self-proclaimed individuals was part of the ebb and flow of the Islamic political experience. The twentieth century, however, resulted in the end of the last caliphate, that is, the last political order that spoke to the Islamic legitimacy and unity project, as well as the rise of a different kind of world order. Disparate peoples were colonised and decolonised and sovereign states were formed on the ruins of former empires. A new world order was formed after World War Two and, following the last great empire, the Soviet Union, nation-state sovereignty defined international relations. This order was underwritten by the last remaining superpower, the US, an order that the great powers such as China, Russia, India, Japan and the EU largely observe. In this, the Islamic drive for unity and legitimacy was nearly extinguished. The obstacles provided by the international order and its powerful adherents were unsurpassable. This has had the result of projecting the order and legitimacy project out of the Islamic sphere into the world at large.
The term “sovereign democracy,” which entered Russia’s political lexicon in mid-2005, had by late 2007 become the unifying ideology of the ruling United Russia party — now headed by Prime Minister Putin himself. Its advocates within the presidential administration argued that a sovereign democratic state in the international system was politically and economically (“financial sovereignty”) independent thanks to both a strong military and state control over key strategic economic assets. Throughout the two terms of the Putin presidential administration, a dominant progressive narrative held that Russia had reemerged from the chaos and disorder of the 1990s as one of a handful of centers of global power and influence. This reflected both larger global processes and strong leadership within the state.
If we compare today's world with the World(s) from 1914, 1929 or 1939, some similarities occur: multiple powerful actors on the global and regional levels with conflicting interests, economic difficulties of a large number of economies, and the inability of " the international community " to put a stop on the world's most intense conflicts or rivalries. The Great Recession, which hit the developed, especially European economies the hardest, has shifted more economic power into the direction of emerging economies, thereby accelerating an inevitable economic and political change. Various states have managed to accelerate the change in the distribution of economic wealth. These states, grouped mainly in the BRICS, and in the Next Eleven (N11) have shown, contrary to the Western, " culturally superior " geopolitical thought, that they are neither backward nor incompetent, thereby challenging the developed states. After the paradigm of American Empire, which ended in the worst economic crisis in 70 years, it is time for a new paradigm. Since it would be an illusion to think that multipolarity would be shaped by all the parties concerned, it has to be shaped by those most important. However, the current relations between most powerful states are all but cooperative. The pragmatic relations and the common goals of the BRICS states should not be overestimated. The relations between the USA and the EU, which show a high level of homogeneity because of the Ukrainian crisis, may not in the future be so close. A clear difference would exist between the arranged and the accepted multi-polarity, and a multi-polarity in which one side is not inclined but compelled to accept multipolarity, concurrently limiting its achievements. An approach to the present and the future multipolarity and multipolar world that would be multifarious and multifaceted is therefore a necessity.
Global climate change presents one of the most difficult problems the international community has ever faced. Recent events at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference suggest that the United Nations is not yet equipped to address the issue, and national politics reveal that, in most cases, domestic politicians have neither the political will nor the regulatory tools at their disposal to structure effective policy regimes. Against this daunting backdrop, the experiences of United States and European Union climate policy over the last two decades offers instructive lessons. The historical evolution in US and EU climate policy exemplifies how climate change has risen to the top of political agendas in divergent contexts while the spans separating US and EU climate policy to date epitomize the struggles inherent in on-going global efforts to address climate change. Neither the EU nor the US offer unqualified lessons in success, but both offer many lessons, some of which reveal successes but all of which offer opportunities to learn from social, political, and regulatory experiments. Premised on the notion that US and EU efforts to address climate change are closely linked to global climate change politics, this book explores the content and process of climate change law and policymaking in the US and the EU to reveal policy convergences and divergences, and to examine how these convergences and divergences influence the ability of the global community to structure a sustainable, effective, and equitable long-term climate strategy.
This provides the first comprehensive analysis of the concept of the 'security dilemma'. By exploring the theory and practice of the security dilemma through the prisms of fear, cooperation and trust, it considers whether the security dilemma can be mitigated or even transcended analysing a wide range of historical and contemporary cases.
Although the theory of hegemonic stability has attracted an impressive array of adherents, current formulations leave many conceptual issues unresolved. Existing formulations also fail to draw from the theory any implications concerning the process by which a hegemonic state creates and maintains a regime. As an example, Great Britain is generally agreed to have been hegemonic in the nineteenth century, but Britain's behavior was generally inconsistent with that implied by a theory of hegemonic stability. I advance an alternative set of explanations for changes in international tariff levels based on the notion of a “political business cycle.”
The end of the Cold War was a "big bang" reminiscent of earlier moments after major wars, such as the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the end of the World Wars in 1919 and 1945. Here John Ikenberry asks the question, what do states that win wars do with their newfound power and how do they use it to build order? In examining the postwar settlements in modern history, he argues that powerful countries do seek to build stable and cooperative relations, but the type of order that emerges hinges on their ability to make commitments and restrain power. The author explains that only with the spread of democracy in the twentieth century and the innovative use of international institutions--both linked to the emergence of the United States as a world power--has order been created that goes beyond balance of power politics to exhibit "constitutional" characteristics. The open character of the American polity and a web of multilateral institutions allow the United States to exercise strategic restraint and establish stable relations among the industrial democracies despite rapid shifts and extreme disparities in power. Blending comparative politics with international relations, and history with theory, After Victory will be of interest to anyone concerned with the organization of world order, the role of institutions in world politics, and the lessons of past postwar settlements for today. It also speaks to today's debate over the ability of the United States to lead in an era of unipolar power.
I am going to start with two things with which I think nearly all MR readers will probably agree. One, imperialism is an integral part of the capitalist world-economy. It is not a special phenomenon. It has always been there. It always will be there as long as we have a capitalist worldeconomy. Two, we are experiencing at the moment a particularly aggressive and egregious form of imperialism, which is now even ready to claim that it is being imperialist. This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.
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President George W. Bush's national security strategy could represent the most sweeping shift in U.S. grand strategy since the beginning of the Cold War. But its success depends on the willingness of the rest of the world to welcome U.S. power with open arms.
"Global hegemony" might be defined as a situation in which one nation-state plays a predominant role in organizing, regulating, and stabilizing the world political economy. The use of armed force has always been an inseparable part of hegemony, but military power depends upon the economic resources at the disposal of the state. It cannot be deployed to answer every threat to geopolitical and economic interests, and it raises the danger of imperial overreach, as was the case for Britain in South Africa (1899-1902) and the United States in Vietnam (1962-1975). This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.
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This essay examines the Concert of Europe as an international system and offers some general reflections and tentative conclusions about the meaning, the nature, and the operation of concert diplomacy between 1815 and 1854. It focuses upon the assumptions and procedures engendered by the Concert which restrained and moderated the policies of the European great powers by peaceful means. It concludes that the European Concert was a conscious and reasonably successful attempt to devise a stable and peaceful system of interstate relations.
severity and duration of the Great Depression from 1929-33 in terms of the American failure to sustain conditions necessary for the financial stability of an interdependent global economy. In Kindleberger's view, Britain, which had acted as a hegemonic power before 1914, lacked the resources to continue with its historic role after the Great War, while the United States (which by 1918 enjoyed a position in the world economy of arguably greater weight and significance than the United Kingdom had ever possessed during the long nineteenth century) commanded neither the knowledge nor the political will to replace Britain as the responsible hegemonic power until after the Second World War.2 Kindleberger's work served as a starting point for social scientists seeking to develop an analytic and predictive theory of the behaviour of hegemonic powers. Over the past fifteen years, the debate has centred on the articulation and qualification of the 'theory of hegemonic stability'. As originally expounded, the theory holds first that a hegemonic power provides public goods to the international system, such as peace, defence, and prosperity, from which it also benefits, and in the process creates stable order in the system.3 Other members of the
The conventional wisdom among U.S. grand strategists is that U.S. hegemony is exceptionalthat the United States need not worry about other states engaging in counterhegemonic balancing against it. The case for U.S. hegemonic exceptionalism, however, is weak. Contrary to the predictions of Waltzian balance of power theorists, no new great powers have emerged since the end of the Cold War to restore equilibrium to the balance of power by engaging in hard balancing against the United Statesthat is, at least, not yet. This has led primacists to conclude that there has been no balancing against the United States. Here, however, they conflate the absence of a new distribution of power in the international political system with the absence of balancing behavior by the major second-tier powers. Moreover, the primacists' focus on the failure of new great powers to emerge, and the absence of traditional hard (i.e., military) counterbalancing, distracts attention from other forms of counterbalancingnotably leash-slippingby major second-tier states that ultimately could lead to the same result: the end of unipolarity. Because unipolarity is the foundation of U.S. hegemony, if it ends, so too will U.S. primacy.
Balance of power theories have come roaring back into prominence in recent years as international relations theory grapples with new developments, including offshore balancing and soft balancing. Recent works demonstrate the importance of more than just the distribution of power, and have addressed the role that domestic politics plays in balancing. One overlooked aspect of this debate, with implications for offensive realism and the current discussion on the United States and soft balancing, is the role that nonintervention conventions play in decision making. British nonintervention during the American Civil War presents a case at odds with offensive realist theory, as Britain should have intervened to protect its national interests—cotton, trade, and shipping—while also restraining a regional hegemonic power. Domestic cleavages, democratic peace norms, and public opinion pressures do not sufficiently explain this behavior. Instead, this paper posits that nonintervention was a result of British adherence to precedents and conventions.
The American Civil War is an important test case for offensive realism because it was the last occasion when offshore balancing by Britain could have prevented the United States from becoming a regional hegemon. Instead, Britain drew on the norm of nonintervention to justify a policy of neutrality. Offensive realists reject the idea that Britain was constrained by normative considerations but disagree about why Britain failed to operate as an offshore balancer. I acknowledge the importance of the offensive realists' regionalized approach to the international system, but use English School thinking to argue that the normative framework that Britain and the United States subscribed to must be taken into account to provide a coherent explanation of Britain's response to the Civil War. Detailed archival research demonstrates that despite concern about u.s. regional hegemony, Britain was unequivocally constrained by normative considerations. The case study suggests, therefore, that societal constraints were stronger than systemic ones.
Is the United States inevitably in decline? After the foreign policy controversies of the George W. Bush years, a new consensus declares the end of American dominion. In this article this conventional wisdom is challenged. The US constitutes an ‘exceptional empire’ and, despite the recent rise of powers such as the EU, China and India, the four foundations of this distinctive empire remain robust. First, the US still exhibits global predominance in hard power. Second, the essentially unipolar international order shaped by Washington remains resilient. Third, neither the rise of ‘anti-Americanism’ nor the alleged decline of US ‘soft power’ endanger its predominance. Fourth, the US political class is committed to preserving American primacy after Bush. No other power is currently in range of competing with the US for global influence. Moreover, each faces powerful internal weaknesses and external threats at least as significant as those facing the US. America's global predominance in hard and soft power do not translate into omnipotence. Nor does predominance promise an error-free foreign policy. The US nonetheless continues to defy both history and theory.International Politics (2008) 45, 571–593. doi:10.1057/ip.2008.25
The first part of the article therefore will provide a brief analysis of the notion of the American century and en passant advance a security-based theory of hegemony.22 The second will then explore why so many commentators, both academic and popular, took it as read that the US 'empire' -albeit after a brilliant initial phase-was beginning to reveal signs of serious wear and tear from the late 1960s onwards. As I will show, the notion that the United States was in serious trouble, and could easily go the way of all other great powers in the past, had achieved something close to an intellectual and political consensus by the late 1970s.23 This might then help explain the popularity of one especially influential intervention into the debate on US decline: That made by Paul Kennedy with his The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers published in the late 1980s. I discuss his book, and the huge impact it had, before moving on to examine the arguments of the so-called 'revivalists'. They, in turn, provide a useful entrée into looking at the new US self-confidence of the 1990s. Finally, I speculate about the future and ask perhaps the most pertinent question of all: Can US hegemony persist? Or, put another way, will the twenty-first century be even more 'American' than the twentieth?
The author is a member of the Departments of History and Political Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana.
Much of the research and writing of this article was done while the author was a Jennings Randolph Peace Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace; its support is here gratefully acknowledged. Helpful criticism and suggestions have been given by Robert Jervis, Jack Snyder, Robert O. Keohane, Patrick Morgan, Edward Kolodziej, Bruce Russett, Joseph Kruzel, Jennifer Mitzen, Michael Lund, Joseph Klaits, and the members of seminars at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Columbia University's Institute for War and Peace Studies, and the University of Chicago's Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security. They are likewise gratefully acknowledged.
1. The central work is Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979). Other expositions by Waltz of his position are his Man, the State, and War: a Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959); "The Origins of War in Neo-realist Theory," in Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb, eds., The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 39-52; and "The Stability of a Bipolar World," Daedalus, Vol. 93, No. 3 (1964), pp. 881-909. Robert J. Art and Kenneth N. Waltz, eds., The Use of Force: Military Power and International Politics, 4th ed. (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1993) contains many articles exemplifying neo-realist arguments and assumptions, including three by Waltz. Other versions and applications of realist theory may be found in Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987); Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984); Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and John Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1983). For a good introduction to realism and its chief current rival, idealism, see Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (London: HarperCollins, 1993). The classic work of the older realism, emphasizing the state's natural drive for power rather than structural constraints as the chief source of power politics and conflict, is Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Knopf, 1948).
2. For current neo-realist arguments, see John Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War," International Security, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Summer 1990), pp. 5-55; Christopher Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise," International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Spring 1993), pp. 5-51; and Kenneth N. Waltz, "The Emerging Structure of International Politics," International Security, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Fall 1993), pp. 44-79. Layne's argument is analyzed more closely below. For divergent views, see Robert Jervis, "International Primacy: Is the Game Worth the Candle?" International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Spring 1993), pp. 52-67; Jervis, "A Usable Past for the Future," in Michael J. Hogan, ed., The End of the Cold War: Its Meaning and Implications (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 257-268; and John Mueller, "Quiet Cataclysm: Some Afterthoughts on World War III," in Hogan, The End of the Cold War, pp. 39-52. See also Kenneth A. Oye, Robert J. Lieber, and Donald Rothchild, Eagle in a New World: American Grand Strategy in the Post-Cold War Era (London: HarperCollins, 1992); Mark Bowker and Robin Brown, eds., From Cold War to Collapse: Theory and World Politics in the 1980s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Geir Lundestad and Odd Arne Westad, eds., Beyond the Cold War: Future Dimensions in International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); and Stanley Hoffmann, Robert O. Keohane, and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., eds., After the Cold War: International Institutions and State Strategies in Europe, 1989-91 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).
3. It is striking, for example, that a strong opponent of realism, Bruce Russett, seems to accept the validity of the realist paradigm for this period in writing: "It may be possible in part to supersede the 'realist' principles (anarchy, the security...
The structure of international trade, identified by the degree of openness for the movement of goods, can best be explained by a state-power theory of international political economy. This theory begins with the assumption that the nature of international economic movements is determined by states acting to maximize national goals. Four goals—aggregate national income, political power, social stability, and economic growth—can be systematically related to the degree of openness in the international trading system for states of different relative sizes and levels of development. This analysis leads to the conclusion that openness is most likely to exist when there is a hegemonic distribution of potential economic power. Time-series data on tariff levels, trade proportions, regional concentration, per capita income, national income, share of world trade, and share of world investment are then presented. The first three are used to describe the degree of openness in the trading system; the last four, the distribution of state power. The data suggest that the state-power theory should be amended to take into consideration domestic political constraints on state action.
ROBERT JERVIS argues that the Bush doctrine presents a highly ambitious conception of U.S. foreign policy. Based on the premise that this is a period of great threat and great opportunity, the doctrine calls for the assertion and expansion of American power in service of hegemony. He concludes that this assertion and expansion is not likely to succeed.
The challenge for the next American president is formidable, given both the legacy of the Bush foreign policy and systemic dynamics that have changed the nature of leadership in international affairs. American retrenchment is neither in the US nor the global interest. International peace and prosperity are most likely to be achieved if the United States plays a significant and constructive leadership role, for which three qualities are crucial: mutuality (using its position as, still, the most powerful country for shared more than selfish interests), effectiveness and a vision of the global agenda that inspires and embraces others while being grounded in a revitalised domestic agenda.
1. Theory and the application of hegemonic power
After a decade long period during which it was optimistically assumed that under conditions of unipolarity the United States was likely to reign supreme in world affairs for many decades to come, the mood, and with it the debate about the future of the US, has changed dramatically. Hubris has been overtaken by a new mood of intellectual pessimism; the idea of a new American century by the notion of a failing Empire. Though few may wish to call it such, there is no doubting the fact that a new‘decline debate’is now under way in the United States, one that will no doubt be as intense, if not more so, than the one occasioned by the publication in 1987 of Paul Kennedy's hugely influential The rise and fall of the Great Powers. In this article, the sources of the decline debate in the US are traced, as are how and why the debate disappeared following the collapse of the USSR, and why it has now returned to haunt the American landscape.
Some analysts contend that the future of the US is bleak and that its days as a superpower are numbered. While no one can ignore the very serious challenges that confront America at home and abroad, most analyses are dangerously onesided. First, they suffer from a short-term view that overlooks the strong structural underpinnings of American power. Second, naysayers of American power often play up America's faults while ignoring the very serious challenges rising powers must confront if they are to continue on their upward trajectory. Third, writers on America's decline fail to grasp the changing fundamentals of global politics and the shift within world politics that requires states to move away from zero-sum conceptions of international affairs. This response addresses these issues and the assertion by Professor Michael Cox that the US is in decline—again. It argues that that US will continue to be a pre-eminent global superpower and that this power can be extended if the US makes wise choices to expand global governance in its final years as the sole superpower.
Liberal international trade regimes do not emerge from the policies of one state, even a hegemonic one. Trade liberalization among major trading states is, rather, the product of tariff bargains. Thus, hegemons need followers and must make concessions to obtain agreements. The liberal trade regimes that emerged in both the 19th and the 20th centuries were founded on asymmetric bargains that permitted discrimination, especially against the hegemon. The agreements that lowered tariff barriers led to freer trade not free trade; resulted in subsystemic rather than global orders; and legitimated mercantilistic and protectionist practices of exclusion and discrimination, and thus did not provide a collective good. Moreover, these trade agreements (and trade disputes as well) had inherently international political underpinnings and did not reflect economic interests alone. Trade liberalization also required a certain internal strength on the part of the government. Furthermore, only a complete political rupturing of relations, such as occurs in wartime, can destroy such a regime. A hegemon's decline cannot do so alone. These arguments are developed in a historical reassessment of the evolution of the international trading order since 1820. Eras commonly seen as liberal, such as the 1860s, are shown to have included a good deal of protection, and eras seen as protectionist, such as the 1880s, are shown to have been much more liberal than is usually believed.
This paper argues that while the US might retain the desire, and up to a point the material capacity to lead, it is likely to find itself increasingly without followers. Partly this is because the US is less accepted as a model, partly it is because of differences on specific policies, and partly it is because of the changing foundations of legitimacy in international society. The big issues likely to dominate the international agenda in the coming years are more likely to decrease than to increase the willingness of others to follow the US. The waning of US leadership is not just a consequence of the particular incompetence of the Bush administration over the last 8 years, though that has surely amplified the problem. It reflects deeper changes that make global hegemony by any single power, or even by the West collectively, decreasingly legitimate.International Politics (2008) 45, 554–570. doi:10.1057/ip.2008.21; published online 13 June 2008
This article elaborates the changing nature of American hegemony in international relations, and assesses the Bush Administration's determination to change the basis of US hegemony in the context of its proclaimed 'war on terror'. I argue that the Administration's grand strategy is self-defeating, threatening the status of the United States as a benign hegemon without enhancing its security. However, on the assumption that the neo-conservative influence over American foreign policy will wane in the coming months and years, the United States can still take advantage of its unprecedented power to promote a more sustainable world order. The paper begins with an examination of American hegemony in international relations. I then discuss the manner in which the terms of that hegemony have been changed by the current Administration under the guise of the war on terror. The third section is a critical analysis of American grand strategy, and the article concludes with an assessment of the conditions under which the United States can sustain its dwindling hegemony in the years to come. Yes Yes
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