Realists maintain that the nature of International Politics is a constant, at times blood thirsty, struggle for power in an anarchical environment. The occurrence of fundamental change, such as the end of power politics, a self-interested human nature, and the threat of war, in the nature of International Politics is considered flawed. Realists provide evidence for this by pointing firstly to the consistency of human nature, the structure of power, and thirdly to patterns in history.
The policies of the Bush Administration and the conduct of the United States and its allies in counteracting the threat of terrorism have received a wealth of criticism, much of which has been aired publicly. This essay focuses on a critique that does not see much light beyond academic literature: the successful construction of a terrorist threat which has legitimised a war in its name.
This essay argues that, for the English School, war is an essential component of international relations that is regulated by “norms”. Prominent English School thinkers believe that war should be waged with reference to morality and justice (with rules formulated to that effect) and that the purpose and existence of war is as an instrument of international society used to enforce international justice.
This essay argues that neoliberalism seeks to frame highly political and morally-charged operations within a bland discourse that insists on the neutrality of the market. Thus it is necessarily flawed in its contribution to the study of offshore, because it attempts to disguise the invariably political and pragmatic functions of offshore in the contemporary global political economy.
It is a trite but commonplace observation that we are witnessing a resurgence in religion and religious fundamentalism; that the secularist progression envisaged by linear models of social development has not come to fruition. This essay seeks both to contest the notion that secularisation can be seen as a universal or absolute process and, further, to problematise certain critical approaches which understand ‘religion’ as a site of autonomy and resistance against these totalising discourses.
This essay first considers the ideological and discursive background to China’s one-child policy, before employing the Foucauldian concepts of governmentality and biopower to outline how these techniques of control are effected – looking specifically at non-coercive examples, which tend to be overlooked in discussions and popular conceptions of the People’s Republic.
This essay argues that one central problem remains regarding this Marxist theorisation of the international: namely that the normative concern of historical materialism can engender hostility towards contemporary ‘postmodern’ themes, which may ultimately prove an intractable obstacle to further intellectual enquiry.
As thinkers such as Steve Smith have noted, whilst the positivist mainstream approaches continues to dominate the social sciences—and in particular Americanised disciplines such as International Relations—there have been gradual moves in Europe towards more reflectivist alternatives (2000). In light of this, it’s pertinent to ask whether approaches such as genealogy, dialectics and critical theory represent a useful diversion, or whether they are merely a distraction from what we should be doing.
The anarchical Hobbesian ‘state of nature’ is a commonly used paradigm in IR theory, yet this essay argues that alternative understandings of Hobbes’ work call into question the degree to which he himself could be accurately described as ‘Hobbesian’.
In the shift from a Fordist to a post-Fordist international economic system, neo-Schumpeterian theorists have come to anticipate a “hollowing out” of the state, in which sovereignty is displaced ‘upward, downward, and, to some extent, outward.’ In this transition, subnational entities are afforded an increasing prominence on the international stage; no longer simply an extension of the Keynesian welfare state, tasked with ‘offloading fiscal demands from national state treasuries’, but ‘important partners in promoting exports and attracting foreign direct investment.’
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