Böcker i Palgrave Studies in International Relations-serien

This book project studies the variation of sovereignty in international order by analysing how the general model of sovereignty is localised in the political practice of two major non-Western rising powers, namely China and India. It aims to investigate how the sovereignty of these states is constituted, which includes the question of how sovereignty works and becomes constituted in specific contexts and cases that fall outside the discourses and positions of the so-called Westphalian (conservative, absolutist) sovereignty that is dominantly advocated by these two states on a global level. The core of this project explores specific contested cases and situates them vis-à-vis the broader approaches of China and India to sovereignty. I specifically analyse four particular cases: Chinäs approach to sovereignty in relation to Hong Kong and Taiwan and Indiäs approach to sovereignty in relation to Bhutan and Kashmir. In doing so, I will illustrate that sovereignty is a flexible and plasticphenomenon which can be intertwined with principles, models or practices that are usually seen as divergent from or contradicting sovereignty; for example, those that derive from Chinäs and Indiäs imperial and colonial history.

This book covers selected topics on contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy to understand and critically analyze the ideas, discourses, actors, processes and structures in the foreign policymaking. It provides the readers with a compilation of chapters on the critical analysis of Turkey¿s changing positionality and foreign policy identity. In doing so, it draws on the tools and perspectives offered by the critical theories and approaches in International Relations and relevant disciplines. Most of the chapters included in this project deal with the dramatic metamorphoses that took place in Turkish Foreign Policy during the period when the Justice and Development Party ruled and their ongoing consequences.

This book investigates the phenomenon of overbalancing through an analysis of Japan¿s foreign policy during the interbellum. In the mid-1930s, Japan withdrew from a naval arms control framework that had restrained military buildup on both sides of the Pacific Ocean since the early 1920s. By doing so, Japan not only triggered a naval arms race with the United States that exhausted its economy, it also destroyed the last institutionalized structure regulating the relationship between the two Pacific powers. Japan and the United States became caught in a spiral of tensions that culminated with the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Puzzling is the fact that the international environment in the Asia-Pacific was relatively stable in the mid-1930s, while Washington was pursuing a policy of accommodation toward Tokyo. By rejecting arms control and engaging in unfettered naval expansion, Japan overbalanced against the United States and began its rush to the Pacific War.The book explains Japan¿s overbalancing with a neoclassical realist model that combines the literatures on threat perception and civil-military relations. Amid the Manchurian crisis of 1931-1933, as the Japanese government collaborated with the military institution to address the situation in China, military influence on the formulation of foreign policy surged. The perceptual and policy biases of the military, which include the tendency to distrust other countries¿ intentions, to adopt worst-case analyses of international dynamics and to strive to maximize military power, gradually penetrated the decision-making process. Dysfunctions in the preexisting structure of Japanese civil-military relations, engendered by an over-depoliticization of the military institution, allowed the navy to convince policymakers that the United States was inherently hostile to Japan, hence the necessity to prepare for war. The government was brainstormed, adopting the biased military perspective on international affairs. Japan overbalanced in a myopic but conscious way.

Why is it so difficult for a great power or a hegemon to retrench its overseas military power? Specifically, why are U.S. military bases and troops still largely where they were five years ago, twenty years ago, or even seventy years ago? Through developing a theory of great-power persistence, this book offers an explanation. Closely aligned with neoclassical realism, the theory argues that the murkiness of the anarchic international system combines with specific psychological inclinations of individuals to produce ¿better-safe-than-sorry¿ policies. In the United States, decisions on troop deployments are powerfully influenced by the broader foreign-policy community. Its members tend to be risk-averse and highly sensitive to the possibility that even minor troop withdrawals might set off harmful geopolitical chain reactions. Preferring the status quo over any uncertain alternative, they want their country to continue to maximize its influence and project its military power abroad inorder to steady wobbling geopolitical ¿dominoes.¿ The theory is put to the empirical test through a systematic analysis of U.S. overseas troop deployments, withdrawal attempts, and retrenchment resistance during the presidency of Donald Trump, which represents an ideal test case for these mechanisms. Even if U.S. voters elected a retrenchment advocate as president, and despite that the United States is a gradually declining power, the period saw very little change in U.S. overseas troop deployments. The book concludes that, barring any dramatic, unforeseeable international event, the vast network of overseas U.S. military bases and troops is likely to persist for a long time to come.

Strategic Narratives, Ontological Security and Global Policy provides a pathbreaking account of why some states successfully convince others to join their policy initiatives, and why others fail. Examining Chinäs Belt and Road Initiative and COVID-19, Thomas Colley and Carolijn van Noort argue that strategic narratives can help persuade states to join global policy initiatives if they convincingly promise audiences material gain while avoiding undermining their ontological security. They make their case by analysing eight diverse countries: India, Italy, Kazakhstan, Mexico, the Maldives, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. Theoretically novel and global in scope, this book provides a compelling explanation of how strategic narratives can help achieve the global policy coordination needed to confront vital challenges in contemporary international relations. The proposed strategic narrative buy-in framework is applicable to many global policy issues, be it promoting trade and infrastructure projects, mitigating climate change or managing pandemics.

Contributors situate the politics of translation in the theoretical and methodological landscape of International Relations, encompassing feminist theory, de- and post-colonial theory, hermeneutics, post-structuralism, critical constructivism, semiotics, conceptual history, actor-network theory and translation studies.

This book studies how the pursuit of becoming an established 'insider' in an international community shapes a state's foreign policy.

This edited volume presents a collection of stories that experiment with different ways of looking at international law.

This book seeks to reposition international relations (IR) theory by providing insights into non-Western concepts and theories.

This book is the third volume in a trilogy that traces the development of the academic subject of International Relations, or what was often referred to in the interwar years as International Studies.

In this volume, the author begins with the 1932 Mission to China and conference in Milan, examines the International Studies Conference, reviews the Hoover Plan, the MacDonald Plan, the fate of the World Disarmament Conference, and the League of Nations' role in the discipline.

This book develops a discourse theory of crisis and change in global politics. The incompleteness and contingent character of the social represents the most important condition for democratic politics to become possible and for a theory of crisis and change to become conceivable. Instead, crisis becomes an omnipresent feature of the social fabric.

Contributors situate the politics of translation in the theoretical and methodological landscape of International Relations, encompassing feminist theory, de- and post-colonial theory, hermeneutics, post-structuralism, critical constructivism, semiotics, conceptual history, actor-network theory and translation studies.

This book traces the development of the international society tradition from its origins in Grotius' On the Law of War and Peace to its crystallization in Bull's The Anarchical Society.

This book demonstrates that geohistory is a more effective concept than geopolitics in understanding inter-state relations, at a time of considerable confusion in world affairs, and that Francesco Guicciardini¿s thoughts are an efficient medium to demonstrate not only the inadequacies of geopolitics, but that a geohistorical approach can be a more responsible way of understanding international affairs. The book introduces a fresh approach, based on the individual, on which corporate characteristics and behaviour depend, often in the shape of state interests, which are unable on their own to predict actions driven by human behaviour. The book shows how show mainstream international relations theories are stuck in paradigms, inadequate in explaining why world politics is moving in a direction that nobody could predict even a decade ago. It shows how ideology can blur clear understanding. In short, it represents a new and intellectually refreshing approach and method in understanding, and tackling, the vagaries of relations between states.

This book offers an assessment of the ongoing transformation of hegemonic order and its domestic and international politics. The case studies in this book thus investigate hegemonic politics across regimes (e.g., trade and security), regions (e.g., Asia, Europe, and Global South), and actors (e.g., major powers and smaller states).

This book investigates the UK's nuclear weapon policy, focusing in particular on how consecutive governments have managed to maintain the Trident weapon system.

This book is the first volume in a trilogy that traces the development of the academic subject of International Relations, or what was often referred to in the interwar years as International Studies.

This edited volume presents a collection of stories that experiment with different ways of looking at international law.

This book examines the crossroads of quantum and critical approaches to International Relations and argues that these approaches share a common project of uncovering complexity and uncertainty.

This book examines the linkage between deviance and norm change in international politics. It draws on an original theoretical perspective grounded in the sociology of deviance to study the violations of norms and rules in the global nuclear non-proliferation regime.

This book takes a new approach to answering the question of how NATO survived after the Cold War by examining its complex relationship with the United States.

This volume explores the past, present and future of pessimism in International Relations. The book traces the origins of pessimism in political thought from antiquity through to the present day, illuminating its role in key schools of International Relations and in the work of important international political theorists.

While political actors used norms to legitimize their ideas for institutional change, the complex and dynamic nature of these norms also provided the breeding ground for contestation and, sometimes, institutional sclerosis and failure.