International Structures and Chinese Foreign Policy

The Peace of Westphalia signed in 1648 signaled the beginning of the modern international system of states. International relations (IR) theory identifies this treaty as the founder of the principle of political sovereignty whereby each nation-state has full control over its territory and domestic affairs, thus it is the beginning of an international system of states. The latter is based on the sanctity and inviolability of interstate borders as its main defining feature. This paper investigates the recent developments in international relations and their significance to the concept of borders in IR theory; on the one hand, a “clash of civilizations” thesis assumes that new “fault lines” borders among civilizations of, mainly, different religions are taking precedence over traditional territorial borders of nation-states, while, on the other hand, a rise in conservative nationalism and, possibly, protectionism, over the traditionally liberal West reasserts the primacy of territorial borders in IR. In particular, this study examines whether such developments signal a paradigm shift in IR theory that may necessitate revisiting certain fundamentals of mainstream respective theories.

The aim of this essay is to discuss the places of the notions of subjectivity and reflexivity within International Relations (IR) theory by contrasting the classical perspective inspired by positivism with a dialogical perspective which tries to fully integrate these notions in its examination of the specific nexus between identity and alterity. This dialogical perspective proposes a reflexive tool, the hermeneutical locus, which is intended to provide a way to assess the subjectivity of the cognised without falling into reification and a reflexive archaeology of the discipline of IR itself. In this sense, a dialogical approach wishes to offer a reflexive tool for and on IR theory.

This book discusses the applicability of Western International Relations (IR) theories to Asia and Africa and the rise of non-Western IR theories (especially in Asia), with case studies focused on the Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Sub-Saharan African regions. Theoretically grounded studies of Asia and Africa are still in high demand, as International Relations scholarship on and in those regions seems underdeveloped in this regard. This is the case both in the application of Western theories in research on Asia and Africa, but especially IR theory-building by scholars in both regions. The book is driven by the question, whether we need specific Asia and Africa-oriented IR theories to describe, explain and predict developments in regional international relations or can we apply or adapt the so-called Western IR theories.

A growing literature has sought to address the question of Chinese nationalism, and particularly whether or not its rise over the last decade could make China more prone to international conflict. Yet these discussions have often not been well grounded in either theories of nationalism or international relations (IR) theory. This paper will seek to fill this gap by using a constructivist approach to examine how nationalism is constituted by the interaction of states. By doing so, it will be argued that Chinese nationalism can best be understood as a reactive response to international events rather than domestic political manipulation.

Neorealism as a theory of international relations is criticized for its failure to predict a state foreign policy behavior. We argue, by contrast, that neorealism can be used as a theory of foreign policy at the structural level of analysis. Particularly, this study evaluates two neorealist theories – defensive realism and offensive realism, against historical records using a congruence analysis approach. To uncover the neorealist theories' explanatory power, ex ante predictions are generated regarding the policy of the Federal Republic of Germany towards the European Economic Community's (EEC) Northern enlargement and the Mediterranean enlargements in the 1960's and the 1970's. The defensive realism's and offensive realism's predictions then are tested against the empirical evidence. The newly declassified archival documents have shown that neorealist theories capture much of the variation in Germany's EEC enlargement policy. It demonstrated that variation in the German foreign policy took place after a clearly defined shift in distribution of power, and consequently, in a realm of security had occurred. The research thus doubts negative criticism about neorealism as a tool for understanding state foreign behavior by initiating inquiry into the direct interaction between the distribution of power in the international system and state's security needs. It also advances the literature on neorealist theories by shifting their application away from war to cooperation. Furthermore, after this study it is now possible to conclude on which of the neorealist theories has the most potential regarding application to foreign policy analysis. From the test results we recommend defensive realism as a theory which has grater potential of explanatory power.

There is an expectation today that International Relations (IR) theory ought to engage with philosophy as a meta-knowledge capable of grounding and legitimizing knowledge claims in the discipline. Two assumptions seem to lie behind this expectation: first, that only philosophy can supply the necessary meta-theoretical grounding needed; second, that theory is inherently a philosophical register of knowledge. This article treats these assumptions with scepticism. While not denying philosophy’s contribution to IR theory, the article makes the case for contextual intellectual history as an alternative mode of political and international theory. It seeks to shed light on the ‘philosophization of IR’ by depicting the broad contours of the historical and continuing rivalry between philosophy and history in the humanities and social sciences and, by reference to Machiavelli and Renaissance humanism, reminding the discipline of IR of the value of studying politics and international relations in a historical mode.

This article explores some basic issues which arise from International Relations (IR) theory also being a form of social theory in a broader sense. Many of these issues are related to the question of a “social whole,” that is, whether international relations/International Relations is one of many parts of a social whole, on what grounds it is differentiated from other parts, and whether it operates on a distinct level of social reality. We argue that these questions have been addressed in many forms of IR theory, but mostly only implicitly, and that the failure to make explicit assumptions about a social whole is probably due to the relative neglect of the subject in modern Sociology. The article argues that implicit assumptions about a social whole can be unearthed by looking at the concepts of systems, levels, and sectors, discussing debates about each of these in turn. Openly addressing IR theory as social theory, and spelling out images of a social whole, allows one to gain a sharper understanding of some of the basic analytical categories used, and to judge whether they form plausible delimitations of social reality within a wider social context.

Journal Article Self and Other in International Relations Theory: Learning from Russian Civilizational Debates Get access Andrei P. Tsygankov Andrei P. Tsygankov Departments of Political Science and International Relations, San Francisco State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Review, Volume 10, Issue 4, December 2008, Pages 762–775, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2486.2008.00831.x Published: 18 November 2008

This article argues that the symbolic interactionist sources of the first generation of constructivists in IR theory are worth recovering because of their ability to address what constructivists have always wanted to understand – the social construction of world politics. Symbolic interactionism is more or less implicit in key claims of canonical works of the first generation of constructivism in International Relations (IR) theory. However, constructivism lost some of its potential to address everyday experiences and performances of world politics when it turned to norm diffusion and socialisation. The second generation of constructivists generated rich insights on the construction of national identities and on patterns of foreign policy, but did not fully exploit constructivism’s analytical potentials. Contrary to what most IR scholars have come to believe, symbolic interactionists saw the self as a deeply social – not a psychological or biological – phenomenon. Symbolic interactionism is interested in how inherently incomplete and fragile selves are constructed and deconstructed through processes of inclusion, exclusion and shaming. Today, third generation constructivists are returning to the sociology of Erving Goffman and Harold Garfinkel and other symbolic interactionists to address problems of identity, power and deviance in international politics. Keywords : Goffman, constructivism, identity, power, symbolic interactionism, the social self, stigma, Wendt. ----- Bibliography: Adler-Nissen, Rebecca: The Social Self In International Relations: Identity, Power and the Rediscovery of Constructivism’s Symbolic Interactionist Roots, ERIS, 3-2016, pp. 27-39. https://doi.org/10.3224/eris.v3i3.27340

In this article, I revisit a modern classic, a book that is often cited but rarely analyzed: A.P. Rana's Imperatives of Non-Alignment. Appearing in 1976, the book was a culmination of decade-long work and claimed to be the first attempt at IR theory from India. Rana was indeed from the first generation of scholars who engaged deeply with International Relation (IR) theory, and the book drew on a range of, sometimes contradictory, theoretical perspectives from Systems Theory to Realism to English School to Hindu Social Theory. In this intervention, I analyze this book and the corpus of Rana's writings with an attempt to contribute to two themes within IR. First, I show how caste plays a prominent role in Rana's thinking about Indian strategies of foreign policy behavior. His analysis makes a case for seeing nonalignment as a historical continuation of a Brahminical mode of balancing. Consequently, this article is also an effort to place caste as a central category of IR theorization from India. Secondly, I discuss the specific ways in which Rana's realism adapted to its Cold War context and advanced a redemptive vision of realism.

This article draws on Hobbes and existentialist philosophy to contend that anxiety needs to be integrated into international relations (IR) theory as a constitutive condition, and proposes theoretical avenues for doing so. While IR scholars routinely base their assumptions regarding the centrality of fear and self-help behavior on the Hobbesian state of nature, they overlook the Hobbesian emphasis on anxiety as the human condition that gives rise to the state of nature. The first section of the article turns to existentialist philosophy to explicate anxiety's relation to fear, multiple forms, and link to agency. The second section draws on some recent interpretations to outline the role that anxiety plays in Hobbesian thought. Finally, I argue that an ontological security (OS) perspective that is enriched by insights from existentialism provides the most appropriate theoretical venue for integrating anxiety into IR theory and discuss the contributions of this approach to OS studies and IR theory.

This chapter suggests that Yan’s ‘moral realism’ is a path-breaking realist theory, which integrates ancient Chinese philosophy, historical and contemporary cases, and modern international relations (IR) theory. It explains the rise of great powers and the transformation of the international order. It highlights the key role of political leadership in explaining why only a few rising powers can succeed while others cannot. Political leadership can also account for the changing international power configurations, norms, orders, and systems. There are three issues that Yan’s moral realism might need to clarify further: the conceptualizations of morality and political leadership, the interactions and mechanisms between state leadership and international leadership, and the holistic view of norms and leadership. These three issue areas can be seen as an opportunity for other scholars to further explore in order to advance moral realism as a new IR theory in the future.

Neorealism, States, and the Modern Mass Army. By Joao Resende-Santos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 321 pp., $29.99 paper (ISBN-13: 978-0-521-68965-6). Many students of international relations have found themselves attracted to the parsimony and elegance of neorealist theory. Yet, as Waltz (1986:329) has himself observed, neorealist structuralism only explains “a small number of big and important things.” Subsequent scholars have therefore attempted to expand the theoretical and empirical boundaries of neorealism. Resende-Santos is no different in this regard as he attempts to claim new territory theoretically through his “theory of neorealist emulation” and empirically through the study of Latin America. Orthodox neorealists are unlikely to be persuaded by the theoretical claims, but neoclassical realists would find much to appreciate in this book. The discussion of emulation situates this work nicely in general International Relations (IR) theory as well as in security studies more specifically. Latin Americanists interested in the effects of interstate competition in the region should also find plenty of material to digest and debate. Finally, this work offers some of the building blocks needed to connect general IR theory with the literature on state building. Military emulation is defined as “the deliberate imitation by one state of any aspect of another state's military system that bears upon its own military system” (p. 9). The basic thesis of the book is that states will emulate the military organization of the great power with the most recent proven effectiveness in war when faced with a threatening security environment. In particular, Resende-Santos wants to explain why states emulate, why they choose specific military systems, when they emulate, and the variation in the pace and scale of emulation. Resende-Santos develops a neorealist theory of emulation that is then illustrated with reference to the historical record in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile between 1870 and …

Pursuit of knowledge in the Western Social Sciences, and the discipline of International Relations within that broader category, has traditionally been conducted within a positivist framework, with its epistemological base being largely confined to empirical knowledge. Accordingly, research and theory construction within the discipline remains essentially confined to the issues, explanations, prescriptions, and methodologies which suggest themselves from within its own narrow epistemology, with alternatives deriving from extraneous sources of knowledge, particularly non-material ones, being discredited, or more generally, neglected. Perhaps the most profound effect of positivism has been the extent to which its imperatives have dehumanised mainstream International Relations theory. In the place of human persons, and human agency, theoreticians have inserted the abstractions of states, classes and systems, and the Imperatives of power and conflict; in the place of a unitary humanity, dissociative states or classes with competing interests; and in the place of human values, a claim to objective value-neutrality. However, in the world which exists outside the intellectually rarefied one of the mainstream theorist - the world in which human beings live out their individual and collective lives - it is obvious that positivism and the image of international reality which it dictates does not reign supreme. Consequently, it is a world which the mainstream theories of International Relations are quite unable to perceive, let alone explain, from within their own limited body of knowledge. Any attempt at a comprehensive understanding of the world and its potentialities therefore necessitates a movement beyond the narrow confines of mainstream epistemology, and, while a drawing from the funds of knowledge contained In the other Social Sciences can do much to overcome existing theoretical and explanatory inadequacy, there remains yet a further rich source of untapped knowledge in the wisdom and insight which the great religious traditions of our world have built up over the millenniums of their existence. It is a wisdom and a source of knowledge which contains alternative perceptions of human reality and international relations within it, and identifies alternative possibilities for the future of our world. Moreover, the reservoir of knowledge contained in the minds of the great religious traditions is the heritage of humanity, and is too rare and precious to ignore. The central aim of this dissertation is to identify the alternative images of international reality contained within the religious traditions of Christianity and Buddhism, and to elucidate the areas in which they challenge mainstream conceptions. For example, the religions profoundly believe that international relations are moral and valuational relations between human beings, thus replacing the dissociative world of the mainstream theoretician with an associative image of one humanity sharing one world and possessed of a universal, human common good. Perhaps most importantly, Christianity and Buddhism insist that we are not doomed to a perpetual struggle for power, nor for change via class struggle. Rather, they hold out an optimistic and empowering image in which people are reinstated as the fulcrum of all IVinternational activity, and are seen to hold within themselves the power to change the world via peaceful means, and for the betterment of all.In recent years Normative theorists, situated on the periphery of the discipline, have generated an assault against the fortifications of the mainstream, the substance of which shows a greater affinity with the person-centrism and associative nature of the Christian and Buddhist image. However, not only have they, as yet, failed to broach the entrenched position of the mainstream, but their failure to root their theories in values whose source and justification is expressly identified, leaves them in a weakened position. Yet, their very existence is of inherent importance as it represents at least the appearance of the first slight cracks in positivism's domination of the discipline. A 'marriage' of the insights of Normative International Relations theory with the profoundly human insights of the great religious traditions of Christianity and Buddhism would do much to illuminate that area of human activity and, at the same time, assist in reversing the foreclosure on human potentialities which pervades the mainstream.

This article argues that the dialog between Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) and Critical Geopolitics (CGP) can enrich FPA, deepen FPA’s engagement with International Relations (IR) theory and present a new research agenda for FPA’s middle-range theorizing. In the study, it is put forward that the conversation between FPA and CGP can strengthen the connection between FPA and IR theory in various ways. CGP’s emphasis on agent-centrism, ability to transcend the inside-outside dichotomy, critique of natural law-like generalizations in foreign policy, preoccupation with how-possible type questions, and interdisciplinarity can all contribute to FPA and FPA’s relationship with IR. Thus, the theoretical foundations of CGP, which are largely derived from post-structuralism, have a significant potential to strengthen the connection between FPA and IR.