The European security regime cannot serve as a model for East Asia, as this region is conditioned by markedly different institutional, political, economic, and cultural factors that are manifest in strong preferences for informal, incremental and bilateral frameworks based upon the principles of non-interference, consensus-building, power-balancing and bandwagoning. Nevertheless, the OSCE pillar of the European security regime may be a more appropriate model for Africa.
Communism in the 1970s was stagnant both as an ideology and as a form of government. This work will outline several factors which made the system stagnant. It is important to bear in mind that there was some progress at the policy level, but the analysis will show this did not translate into real progress because of problems ingrained in the system.
Despite conclusive and significant scientific evidence to the contrary, there is still some considerable scepticism over the nature, causes and consequences of climate change. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and cyclones, as well as retreating glaciers and melting sea ice at the North and South poles, are all indicative of a warming world.
This article is a response to the pervasive rhetoric that globalisation, in particular the associated implication that capitalism is an expanding global force that is inextricably enmeshed within globalisation, has been and continues to erode the state.
The questions of how the concept of global governance can be used to describe the prevailing global order and what is the most appropriate way of formulating the concept of global governance challenge the limits of traditional IR theory to explain a world where the shape and importance of individual states is changing and the role of agents above and below the state is increasing.
In this paper I will assess an important element of American foreign policy, that of nation building. I will focus on the American reconstruction of Germany and Japan in the aftermath of the Second World War and to evaluate their impact and successes and to ascertain whether those lessons on nation-building can be implemented today in Afghanistan.
This essay argues that the relationship of strategic interdependence between local NGOs and foreign donors is inherently asymmetrical and has important organizational and managerial consequences for NGOs in terms of their identity, activities and reporting; autonomy, legitimacy and accountability; and, in that it further perpetuates global/local and North/South asymmetries.
In recent years declassified documents relating to attempts by the Kennedy administration at withdrawing US forces from the conflict in Vietnam have been released, causing much debate among scholars and historians. Previously not much was written about Kennedy’s decision to withdraw US personnel from Vietnam in over 40 years of historical writing.
Through its evaluation supported by case studies, this paper will argue that to an extent the relationship between the two sets of NGOs is based upon partnership. However it will go on to argue that to a greater extent, the relationship between NNGOs and SNGOs is not free from local and international agendas and as a result, the power sharing context of partnership disproportionately favours the NNGOs.
Theory can never be detached from situational context. Far from even contemplating the possibility of bias-free analysis, I argue that any knowledge claim must always be inherently political in nature, capable of stimulating or withholding change in the social context in which the claimant is embedded. If this (admittedly divisive) assumption is correct, it seems the theorist, including the IR theorist, has two somewhat polar options. He can concentrate on and develop theory that ‘leads to analysis that is pro-status quo and amoral’, or alternatively he can concentrate on the critical evaluation of how we come to see a certain range of possibilities in the international arena.
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