The disciple of international relations, like all the social sciences, needs theories to make sense of the world it is trying to examine. The merits and faults of each school of thought have been contested in what are known as the ‘great debates’.
The impossibility of peace without subjection, even though men understand the laws of nature which dictate peace, is due to both the conditions in the absence of a common power and the passions of men. A Commonwealth is vital to provide restraint and security, in order for men to willingly lay down their natural right in favour of the natural laws.
The question of what nationalism is, is as essential as what it is not. Nationalism is a multisided phenomenon, not an ideology which is always dangerously exclusionary.
Within the study of world politics, one of the ways in which theorists have transcended state-centric analysis has been to couch it in terms of the ‘politics of Governance’ and the ‘politics of Resistance’. The logic of politics within this context is the competition and conflict between these two ‘blocs’. However, the case of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) challenges this dichotomy.
As US President Barack Obama outlined his ambitious vision of a world without nuclear weapons, this essay proposes to analyse whether nuclear disarmament is indeed a more serious policy option today than at the dawn of the atomic age in 1945 or at the height of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
Junio Valerio Palomba provides an alternative insight on the nature of private military and security companies and their activities. Specifically, he demonstrates how recent changes in the organization and structure of the market for force – such as the disappearance of combat operations – can be interpreted and explained through the theoretical lens of legitimacy.
On September 16, 2007, the issue of private military firms exploded out of the dry confines of academic debate and into the public consciousness as bright, bloody pictures blanketed the newspapers and television networks that had long ignored the subject. Seventeen Iraqis had been violently killed and more than twenty others wounded while they went about their business in Nisour Square, in the heart of Baghdad’s once fashionable Mansour District.
In the aftermath of the banking crisis, many commentators are calling for new global regulation regimes. This essay argues that prudent banking supervision on the national level can be considered more effective than global alternatives, and is able to prevent national banks from establishing risky business practices. International regulation efforts, by contrast, have proved damaging.
An analysis of Thomas Hobbes’ the ‘Leviathan’ will focus on introducing the importance of the state of nature as an image of life without government. By using contemporary examples, the aim is to illustrate how states behave in the international paradigm in terms of ensuring self-preservation.
Francisco de Vitoria, a theologian of the 16th century and core writer of the Renaissance, questions our understanding of international affairs and, thus, International Relations as an academic discipline. He leads us to think about the ambiguity of the norms of the contemporary international system, and of international law.
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