This paper examines the conceptualization of women in contemporary counterterror conflicts. It analyzes in which ways constructed gender dichotomies as the beautiful soul and the just warrior are reinforced and manipulated by political elites focusing on the case of Afghanistan. The paper’s core is the (re)construction of women as victims by politicians, namely the Bush administration.
‘Globality’ can hardly be achieved if it does not embrace at least the majority of the Earth’s population. While global civil society may be a reality as an occurrence that has no precedent in history, this does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that global civil society is ‘global’ in the way it is envisioned by its most ardent supporters.
One of the last major books about war in international relations is paradoxically a book forecasting the end of the object it analyses. Retreat from Doomsday: the Obsolescence of Major War by John Mueller was released in 1989 and has become a classic reading making the author one of the most influential authors on the topic of war.
The human rights discourse has become a paradigm in international relations, with the transition from the international system to an international society. A vital aspect of that paradigm is the differentiation between adult and child, which has also been primarily instituted by the West. The supremacy of this definition has served the supremacy of the West in the human rights question.
There is an incompatibility between the purpose and mode of Middle Eastern economic development to date and the fraught efforts towards forms of democracy across the region. Additionally, the importance of certain economic developments to specific actors has successfully outweighed the importance of democracy in the region, and will persist in doing so for the foreseeable future.
This paper will analyse how the concepts in Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society are influencing the War on Terror. Moreover, it will examine their practical enforcement, the way in which they pose serious threats to the international law system and how this contributes to the shaping a new domestic order in those states where they have being applied.
The Realist school of thought in International Relations has claimed both Thucydides and Hobbes as two of their intellectual forefathers and in doing so has suggested that the core beliefs and views of these two political thinkers can be classified as Realism. Although the key realist ideas can be found in both authors, there are significant differences that need to be addressed.
Terrorism did not begin in 2001, nor is it confined to extremists in the Middle East. Often, those who wish to point out the difficulty in defining terrorism like to refer to an old, now-famous quotation: “One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.” Within the complex international system, the line drawn between the two can regularly become blurred or difficult to see: nonetheless, this line still exists.
Within the study of IR, there exist competing theories that seek to be the theory that is able to explain the behaviour of states in their interactions with each other. Increasingly important is the concept of synthesizing theories. This paper will seek to establish an example model for the use this “theoretical cooperation,” or division of labour, concept.
The following paper will firstly introduce the arguments for the Positivist approach to research, which focuses on quantitative methods, and for the Interpretist approach, which focuses on qualitative methods. The second part will apply these approaches to the issue of torture and in doing so will identify and discuss the limitations of applying only one theory or approach to research.
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