CANCELLED - BISA 2020 conference
Civic Centre
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Roundtable / Abolish/ Defend/ Repair – Action from the local to the international on a warming fascist planet. Armstrong Room
Against a backdrop of fascist resurgence and climate breakdown, this conversation brings together active projects for liberated global futures. From anti-racist action to extractivist abolition, from grounded community defence to global solidarity, and from recommoning to reparation – voices around this table work through old and new tactics for building local commons and reviving internationalism.
Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working GroupChair: Lisa Tilley (Birkbeck University of London)Participants: Lisa Tilley (Birkbeck University of London) , John Narayan (KCL) , Kerem Nişancıoğlu (SOAS) , Nivi Manchanda (Queen Mary University of London) , Leon Sealey-Huggins (Warwick) -
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Roundtable / Author Meets Critics: Cloud Ethics Council Chamber
In Cloud Ethics, Louise Amoore examines how machine learning algorithms are transforming the ethics and politics of contemporary society. Conceptualizing algorithms as ethicopolitical entities that are entangled with the data attributes of people, Amoore outlines how algorithms give incomplete accounts of themselves, learn through relationships with human practices, and exist in the world in ways that exceed their source code. In these ways, algorithms and their relations to people cannot be understood by simply examining their code, nor can ethics be encoded into algorithms. Amoore offers a new view on the debate on fairness in algorithmic calculation, by paying attention to the conditions of partiality and opacity that haunt both human and algorithmic decisions. She proposes what she calls “cloud ethics” as a way to hold algorithms accountable by engaging with the social and technical conditions under which they emerge and operate. The book will be published by Duke University Press in May 2020.
This Roundtable facilities a discussion about Cloud Ethics and organizes a discussion between the author and her critical readers.Sponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working GroupChair: Marieke de Goede (University of Amsterdam)Participants: Belcher Oliver (Durham University) , Marieke de Goede (University of Amsterdam) , Amoore Louise (Durham University) , Martin Coward (University of Manchester) -
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Panel / Dealing with Popular Discontent on Security and Migration Stephenson RoomSponsor: European Security Working GroupConveners: Jocelyn Mawdsley (Newcastle University) , Arantza Gomez Arana (Birmingham City University) , Helena Farrand Carrapico (Northumbria University)Chair: Helena Farrand Carrapico (Northumbria University)
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What has been the impact of EU NAVFOR MED Sophia and how do we assess its contribution to alleviating the multiple crises surrounding migration across the Mediterranean? Within the framework of Frontex - the EU agency responsible for monitoring and controlling the EU external borders - how effective is Operation Sophia in meeting its UN-authorised mandate to assist in disrupting the business model of human smuggling and trafficking networks in the Southern Central Mediterranean? The operation also provides training for the Libyan Coastguard and Navy, monitors the long term of efficiency of this training and contributes to the implementation of the UN arms embargo on the high seas off the coast of Libya. It also conducts surveillance activities and gathers information on illegal trafficking of oil exports from Libya, in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions.
The paper argues that Operation Sophia contributes to stabilisation efforts but to realise transformational and long term solutions, better resourcing and stronger political commitment is needed. Operation Sophia is typical of CSDP interventions, securing limited benefits from relatively low-level investment given the scale of the challenges, and having a focus on civilian humanitarian crisis intervention. The migration crisis demands a holistic approach to factors driving migration. Moreover, resolution of wider MENA crises is far beyond European Union capability, although EU normative soft power should not be underestimated. The paper uses interview data from experts and personnel involved in Operation Sophia.Authors: Simon Sweeney (University of York) , Neil Winn (University of Leeds) -
Since 2010, homelessness has steadily increased in London, duplicating in the case of rough sleeping (Fitzpatrick, et al., 2018, p. xiv). In response to this, and largely as a consequence of activism and lobbying, the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 was passed in order to tackle this issue by preventing and relieving homelessness at the local level —yet not without criticism (Butler, 2018). However, these alleviation policies were coupled with a series of often less noticed practices; under the Vagrancy Act 1824, the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, inter alia, a myriad of security professionals have criminalised begging, imposed civil measures, contained through deterrents, such as physical deterrents or noise pollution.
In this paper I will explore these practices of (in)security—and their conditions of possibility—in the city of London, deconstructing not only the janus faced identity of the homeless subject as both threat and victim. To this end, I will respond to the following questions: (1) What practices of (in)security are homeless people subjected to? and (2) How are these official (in)security practices legitimized?, in order to delve into the modes in which vulnerability and agency are (re)produced in the discourses of different agents in order to justify their practices.
For that purpose, using an International Political Sociology methodology, I draw on in-depth interviews with key informants that aim to map some of the actors involved in the “management of homelessness”. On one hand, I examine whether justifications based on vulnerability necessarily rely on “removing” the agency of the subject. On the other, I argue that to understand the justifications of homelessness (in)securitisation, we need to look at the ways in which these are interwoven with discourses on migration. I will also show how official discourses will not always emphasise vulnerability, insisting instead on a “greater good” (highlighting the utilitarian logics that underline their arguments).
Author: Bernardino Leon Reyes (Sciences Po Paris) -
Over the past two years, scenes of massive protests in Paris and Barcelona have made the headlines in broadcasters and newspapers around the world. In common, at least, one colour: yellow. In France, what came to be known as the gilet-jaunes (the yellow vests) and which started as a widespread and somewhat multi-platform revolt still draws attention due to the (in)adequacy of the public response (security forces included). In Catalonia, the CDR (Committees for the Defence of the Republic) have also caught the public eye as a multi-layer committee-based movement protesting for the independence of Catalonia. The yellow ribbon became the symbol of Catalan resistance against what is considered to be a harsh and disproportionate Spanish reaction to the Catalan bid.
Connecting both sides of the Pyrenees was the states’ responses to the protests, overtly criminalising their actions and at the same time exposing the fractures of both governments in dealing with popular uprisings with social capillarity and internet-connected.
In the attempt to better understand the way in which governments respond to mass protests in the current days, this paper sets from a critical, deconstructive approach and aims to analyse the French gilet-jaunes and Catalan CDR to discuss how the idea of threat and danger are articulated as a state response, in a move which both criminalises social uprisings and constructs the notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’.Authors: Daniel Pedersoli , Vinícius Armele dos Santos Leal (PUC-Rio) -
The current migration crisis in the Mediterranean has influenced the development of new European Union policies. From the use of the Navy to implement the EUNAVFOR Operation Sophia in the Mediterranean, to the training of Libyan coastguards, or the EU-Turkey agreement, the EU has designed policies that seem to fail at both avoiding migrants from reaching Europe and from drowning in the Mediterranean. The crisis of the Aquarius, in June 2018, showed a real possibility of a similar tragedy to the one in Lampedusa in 2013, which paradoxically, it was the catastrophe that brought the attention of the society to the migration crisis in the first place, and put pressure on the EU to develop policies that could avoid similar outcomes. While recent literature on the migration crisis focuses on the role of Italy and Greece, Spain is also considered both, a transit, and destination country for migrants from African countries and in particular from Morocco for a long period of time. This paper aims to critically analyse the conflicting responses from Europe to the migration crisis with a focus on the Spanish involvement (i.e the Aquarius). This analysis will critically discuss also how some NGOs such as “Open Arms” and other Spanish activists dedicated to the rescue of migrants in the sea, have been questioned from a legal point of view. Finally, this paper will discuss to what extent Spanish bilateral agreements with Morocco could have an impact on the migration crisis in the Strait of Gibraltar.
Author: Arantza Gomez Arana (Birmingham City University)
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Roundtable / Decolonising Politics Curricula: Pedagogies, Strategies and Reflections Pandon Room
Making sense of contemporary politics is not only a challenge for scholarly research, but equally for teaching and learning in International Studies. Both the composition of the classroom in UK universities, and the complexity of recent political developments provide key drivers for critical understandings that engages with wider social structures, recognises the global interconnectedness, and moves away from Eurocentric, masculine and heteronormative perspectives in knowledge and knowledge production.
This roundtable features a range of university teachers who are engaging with the challenge to diversify and decolonise the curriculum by offering critical perspectives on power relations, inequalities, and marginalisation. This session aims to speak to a large constituency of conference participants by bringing together scholars from quantitative political scientists as well as critical political economists and political theorists. In doing so, all of the participants address the need to disrupt and reconceptualize key concepts and historical narratives.
Sahra Taylor and John Morris argue that decolonization of social, political and economic theory and history requires more than the simplistic insertion of more brown, black and queer voices. These participants will open up a dialogue about how to go about disrupting narratives of world history through an attention to violence, a fracturing of the colonial world and western economic norms. As such, this requires a retheorizing of the history of thought through authors such as Madlingozi, Fanon, Bhabha and Modiri.
This means that authors and topics cannot be merely injected into a traditional curriculum, nor can they be emphasized as ‘other’ through a positioning as the ‘exotic.’ Sahra Taylor argues that decolonization cannot be simply subsumed into the pre-existing neoliberal academy. She provides a critical reading of the traditional and most commonly used plan for teaching International political theories which places power-pragmatism before institution building and relegates (morality and emancipation to after-thoughts in the more poorly attended latter half of the term. Women and people of colour tend to be marginalised because people of colour feature in the week on post-colonialism (in response to white colonialism) and women appear in feminism (in response to patriarchal norms).
John Morris focuses on his attempts to reshape IPE teaching by undergirding the story of the historical development of capitalism through the intimate relationship between liberalism, markets and Empire, the gendering of credit and gambling during the financial revolution and the role of reproductive labour though the gendered nature of primitive accumulation. He is keen to present initial findings from his Ongoing teaching innovation project ““Trans-gender Inclusive Curriculum Design in Politics and International Studies” which brings in transgender history and scholarship into this disruptive history of capitalism.
Neema Begum, Nadine Zwiener-Collins, Rima Saini, Juvaria Jafri and Tabitha Poulter bring to bear their different expertise, experiences and perspectives on the potential for critical approaches to quantitative research to be incorporated into undergraduate teaching of statistics in the social sciences in the UK. The focus of this discussion is conceptual innovation. This requires a careful and sensitive re-centring of framing and operationalising research questions and concepts which are concerned with social and political inequality and transformation. These participants are keen to discuss the understanding and measurement of concepts such as democracy, gender inequality, and humanitarian aid as examples, and aim to supplement those theoretical suggestions with considerations of feasibility and practical aspects derived from 16 semi-structured interviews with academics. The panellists will also consider and discuss the need to encourage methodological pluralism which best fit the aims of the research question at hand and do justice to the population(s) in question.
Sponsor: Learning and Teaching Working GroupChair: Juvaria Jafri (City, University of London)Participants: John Morris (University of Warwick) , Neema Begum (University of Manchester) , Sahra Taylor (City, University of London) , Rima Saini (Middlesex University London ) , Nadine Zwiener-Collins -
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Panel / Europeanisation, nationalism and democracy in South East Europe Katie AdieSponsor: South East Europe Working GroupConvener: Daniela Lai (London South Bank)Chair: Lydia Cole (University of Durham)Discussant: Lydia Cole (University of Durham)
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It takes at least two to play silence. In spite of this inherently constitutive and ambiguous nature of silence, prevailing conceptualizations and readings of the phenomena have focused on discovering the reasons, motivations or intentions mainly of those who are silent. The main purpose behind these endeavors and their ultimate destination has been turning silence into speech. Such an approach prevails in all scholarship and I argue that it needs to change. There is a variety of problematic and potentially harmful consequences that derive especially from speech-centered theories of International Relations which I explore in the first part of this article. In the second part I more specifically elaborate on the (lack of) significance and value of silence for democratic theory and citizenship studies. I argue for prospective benefits of democratic theory and citizenship studies should they shift or broaden up their gaze from silence as meaning towards silence-as-doing. To illustrate this, in the last section I use the case of the referendum on the change of name of Republic of Macedonia to the Republic of North Macedonia held on September 30, 2018. The referendum was declared legally invalid due to a low turnout, but was appropriated as both an expression of democracy and a threat to it by different political actors. The aim of this article is not to elucidate why do certain voters not vote. I instead reach out to those who remain silent through the prism of those who claim to listen in order to see what does the silence of nonvoters do in/to democracy and conceptualizations of citizenship through the different meanings it produced, the interpretations it enabled, the reactions it caused, and the policies it authorized in North Macedonia as a specific case.
Author: Liridona Veliu -
Press freedom in Turkey has been problematic by the standards of “liberal democracy” since the foundation of the republic. “Journalism” has been used instrumentally and the news media have been both perpetrator and victim in this process due to the clientelist nature of the Turkish media economy. Accordingly, there has not been a strong tradition of “speaking truth” unto power by the “fourth estate” and the Turkish mews media have become partisan in wider political struggles: Kemalism, Islamism and the Kurdish issue. However, this paper argues that whilst press freedom has always been problematic, the situation has deteriorated markedly under the AKP government and particularly since 2007 as the AKP government has securitised the media in order to justify increasingly authoritarian policies. It traces the pattern of deterioration to argue that between 2007 and 2016 journalists were secondary targets, eg: in the Ergenekon and KCK investigations, to prevent wider reporting of primary illiberality. However, since the attempted coup d’état in July 2016 the AKP authoritarian reaction to the media has intensified and journalists are now primary targets within a discursive strategy of labelling them as “terrorists” in order to justify persecution and/or prosecution. This reflects the authoritarian drift of the AKP but the situation is not a simple binary between the AKP and “others” but also relates to relations between the three major factions of Turkish politics, the Gülen movement, the Kurdish movement and the Kemalists.
Author: Natalie Martin (University of Nottingham) -
Whilst it is long acknowledged that national identity acts as an important filter on Europeanisation processes, much less scholarly attention has been given to the way in which the EU integration process (re)shapes underlying nationalist politics in a candidate country. This paper seeks to address this gap by examining how the EU accession process of Serbia has forced the ruling elite to change the way in which they engage with nationalism.
Building on the literature on First and Other Serbia, Nationalism and Masculinities, we examine how the EU enlargement process has caused shifts in the national imagining. Whereas Serbia’s politics have long been described as a struggle between so-called first and Other Serbia, we observe a new Hybrid Serbia, in which the Serbian Progressive Party is relying on elements of both first and Other Serbia to maintain its position. In order to theoretically understand how this is possible, we employ the notion of hybrid masculinities to capture how also in nationalist politics, actors associated with First Serbia can employ certain narratives from Other Serbia in such a way to soften their own image whilst also maintaining their poser position. Doing so, the middle ground of the political battlefield is being occupied, which leaves only extreme voices to challenge the elite.
Empirically, this paper traces the debates in the Serbian print media, especially with regard to the discursive chasm between LGBT communities/feminisms and the Serbian Orthodox Church, but also with changes in the dominant media discourse. Doing so, it paper contends that nationalist othering in Serbia is consistently reshaped in order to accommodate the changing political climates.Author: Koen Slootmaeckers (City, University of London) -
Why, despite significant EU assistance and institutional change, do concerns about judicial independence in the Western Balkans remain unabated? The EU’s preferred method of bolstering judicial independence in third party states has been the establishment of highly autonomous judicial councils. Such councils are designed to remove the power of judicial appointment from the Executive (usually the Ministry of Justice) and instead devolve this responsibility to a body composed of judges, judicial professional associations, and representatives from the legislature. This type of autonomous body follows the so-called “European model” of judicial independence found in Southern European EU Members, namely France, Italy, and Spain. However, despite extensive EU conditionality and assistance around judicial reform, levels of perceived judicial independence have not changed over the past decade in the Western Balkans.
Focusing on the case of Serbia, we draw on two conceptualisations of judicial independence in order to try to better understand the apparent lack of progress. First, Ishiyama and Ishiyama Smithey distinguish two dimensions of judicial independence: impartiality (“fairness”) and insularity (“no external influence”). On the other hand, the annual EU Justice Scoreboard measures judicial independence via structural independence (similar to insularity) and perceived independence. We argue that despite the substantial augmentation of judicial independence through institutional reform to improve insularity / structural independence, attention to “fairness” has been neglected. Relatedly, measures gauging perceived judicial independence conflate insularity and fairness.
To disentangle and measure attitudes towards fairness, the study used vignettes developed by Niemi et al. – who distinguish between fairness based on charity, loyalty, or impartiality - to conduct a survey experiment administered to Basic Court judges in Serbia. What our research thus offers is a more nuanced assessment of the situation in Serbia, but also highlights the limitations of exogenous (EU) strategies to reform judicial practice based on a particular measure of ‘independence’.
Authors: Fagan Adam (King's College London)* , Indraneel Sircar (London School of Economics and Political Science) , Vanja Savic (King's College London) -
The European Union is highly interdependent, and the rule of law is one of the main values that keeps the EU together. Corruption has emerged as a global policy problem and in a more and more globalizing world, it needs international policies to tackle it. In Bulgaria, corruption is a threat to the rule of law and it heavily undermines the EU’s efforts of Europeanization. The domestic corrupt practices have been heavily defined by Bulgaria’s political past which is marked by the new post-socialist policy making and more than 20-year-long transition period of deteriorated economic and social conditions. These domestic factors heavily obstruct the effect of EU conditionality, as well as EU anti-corruption measures, weakening the leverage of EU policy. The uncritical transfer of EU policies in the domestic context and the limited capability of EU monitoring over Member States after accession allow for a political culture of corruption to continue thriving in Bulgaria. Due to corruption, the utilization of European funds is very ineffective, which makes the process of Europeanization challenging.
This paper looks into the relationship between levels of corruption and EU membership, anti-corruption reforms due to Europeanization, and the level of economic and social progress in Member States after accession.Author: Teodora Stoyanova (Durham University)
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Panel / Explorations at the Intersection of the Official Record, the Rule of Law, National Security and Democracy Sandhill RoomSponsor: International Law and Politics Working GroupConvener: Peter Finn (Kingston University, London)Chair: Charlotte Heath-Kelly (University of Warwick)
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Who constructs, controls and preserves the official record, and who can access it, are often key to documenting and understanding events. However, partly because of the official record’s potential to contain evidence of controversial policies and malfeasance, its construction, control and preservation in the arena of national security is inherently contested: with those seeking greater openness and (democratic) accountability arguing 'sunlight is [...] the best of disinfectants’, and others, not always unreasonably, urging stricter information control because, to their mind, sound government arises when advice and policy are formulated with a degree of secrecy. Beyond being of mere academic interest, access to the official record can influence judicial proceedings and the ability of those seeking recompense for potential wrongdoing to gain justice. Thus giving it an important place in discussion of the rule of law. Yet, how can one be sure that what is recorded within the official record accurately reflects events in a manner that does not (illegitimately) infringe on the rights of individuals, and what role should oversight play in mediating contestations between a state and its citizens? By engaging with such questions, this paper will act as a framing device for the other papers on this panel.
Author: Peter Finn (Kingston University, London) -
This paper critically analyses the short government-sponsored film Conviction – produced to spread awareness about Prevent – and interviews with Prevent officials, to highlight the significant disjunctures in contemporary terrorism preemption. It highlights, within a risk-society-informed discourse analysis, a state of being where non-criminal subjectivities are infused with assumptions of risk. The film, attempting to show the sorts of behaviours that should be associated with risk (isolation, abuse, lack of role models), portrays a young Muslim schoolboy upset by classmates and by encounters on the street, seeking solace and meaning. It ultimately posits that society should ‘keep an eye out’ for banal behaviours like strong reactions to bullying and the buying of chemicals, just in case they result in acts of terrorism. The paper primarily explores the functioning of banality and temporality in the assumptions made by the direction and implementation of Prevent. It suggests that as pre-crime and post-crime are drawn together, the borders of safe and unsafe are redrawn, the space within which the state intervenes to minimize risk expanding to encompass more racialized and gendered assumptions. And as the past becomes disassociated with the future, the rule of law to protect and maintain rights can ultimately have no response.
Author: Tom Pettinger (University of Warwick) -
Since the UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) war first began, the United States has killed approximately 10 American citizens with armed UAV. Under the Obama Administration, the Department of Justice White Paper delineated the legal framework in which the United States could use lethal force in a foreign country against an American citizen who was considered an imminent threat. Yet the United States’ Constitution allows due process that stipulates that the American government must allow a citizen to be prosecuted and tried by their own legal system. The research question this paper seeks to answer is, “Is the killing of American citizens constitutional and how has this practice been used in the War on Terror?” The paper will explain the process and intelligence cycle of targeted killing, identify and describe the activities of the American citizens that have been killed by their own government, examine legal documents and lastly, will suggest improvements for the American targeted killing process and cycle.
Author: Christine Sixta Rinehart (University of South Carolina Union) -
In 1975, David Belin completed his investigation into the US government’s involvement in the assassination of foreign officials. Belin’s findings were compiled into Chapter 19 of the first draft of the Rockefeller Commission’s report. At the White House, however, Dick Cheney deleted the chapter from the final draft and warned Belin against holding a press conference detailing his findings. Assassination did not appear on the record.
The paper explores the role of assassination in US foreign policy, the discourses surrounding such controversial practice, and the extensive efforts to keep it off the record. The paper traces the emergence of ‘assassination-talk’: the use of euphemisms and circumlocutory language aimed at conveying a message to those on the ‘inside,’ while maintaining plausible deniability. While this language characterised the US approach from the early Cold War, the paper will suggest that the establishment of a ban on assassination in the mid-1970s made ‘assassination-talk’ even more prominent as officials became unwilling to be associated publicly and privately with practices that, in all but name, amounted to assassination. Assassination, the paper will conclude, has been completely erased from the record, in favour of the surgical and aseptic ‘targeted killing.’Author: Luca Trenta (Swansea University ) -
In 2010, WikiLeaks, an organisation founded to provide a platform for the publication of censored/restricted materials, made public over 250,000 US diplomatic cables. It was the largest release of secret material in history. The ‘Cablegate’ episode became an international political and diplomatic sensation. It also created a veritable treasure trove of primary source material for researchers. As a new type of journalistic endeavour for the digital age, WikiLeaks’ practices raised an array of questions regarding whistleblowing, transparency, and the publication of sensitive materials. In 2015, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accused International Relations (IR) scholars of avoiding the use of leaked materials for fear of professional or governmental reprisal. Approaching the ten-year anniversary of Cablegate, WikiLeaks is known more for the controversies surrounding Assange than for the organisation’s purported mission. This paper assesses the impact of WikiLeaks on research within IR. It examines the use of Cablegate cables in the academic study of US foreign policy. It also addresses the methodological and epistemological implications of utilising disclosed documents while reflecting on IR’s inattentiveness to the politics of sourcing in an era of pervasive leaking.
Author: Rubrick Biegon (University of Kent)
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Panel / Hegel, Hegelianism and Ethics in International Relations: Daniel WoodSponsor: Ethics and World Politics Working GroupConveners: David J. Karp (University of Sussex) , Seán Molloy (University of Kent)Chair: Susan Murphy (Trinity College Dublin)
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This paper radically reinterprets virtue ethics and neo-Hegalian theories of the self, through the lens of clarifying the relationship of each to human rights. At first glance, there are strong reasons to think that virtue ethics and theories of the self are incompatible with the contemporary idea of human rights. Virtue ethics seems incompatible because of the power and class-based attributes typically associated with ‘virtuous’ agents, and because of the approach's emphasis on the particular over the universal. In a similar vein, theories of the self seem too introspective; in emphasising the responsibilities of the powerful to respond, they potentially de-centre and de-prioritise the rights and agency of the ‘other’. This paper moves beyond these conservative interpretations of the two traditions. In doing so, it preserves what is most significant: the need for moral agents to reconstitute their identities so that human rights form a part of themselves. This can re-equip these currently-stale traditions for the challenges of the present, at a time when the world is actively contemplating the possible 'end' of the human rights project. At the same time, it helps to re-define the meaning of obligations to "respect" human rights.
Author: David J. Karp (University of Sussex) -
Hegel’s influence on scholarship within international relations and international political theory has often come in a roundabout way through the ongoing influence of his thought upon critical and social theory and the theory of recognition. This paper turns to Hegel as a thinker of the problematic, contradictory and complex nature of modern ‘freedom’ and does so by looking at his comments on the French Revolutionary ‘Terror’ in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and his often overlooked account of ‘civil society’ (bürgerliche Gesellschaft) encompassing early 19th century European commercial relations in the Philosophy of Right (1821). Through this I consider to what extent Hegel’s account of freedom might help us to think through contemporary, abstract conceptions of ‘freedom’ mobilised by globalised forms of neoliberal ideology. I consider also how such an account might help us to better understand neoliberalism’s contemporary nationalist, authoritarian and even neo-fascist legacies which, in Hegel’s terms might be thought of as presenting an idea of freedom as the “fury of destruction.”
Author: Tarik Kochi (University of Sussex) -
E.H. Carr identifies Hegel as one of the most significant Realist theorists of modernity. The paper investigates this claim and, in particular, how Carr’s reading of Hegel informed the development of his ethical positions in The Twenty Years’ Crisis, Conditions of Peace and elsewhere. The paper has two primary axes of interpretation: first, I examine the critiques of law and formalistic ethics offered by Hegel and Carr in Natural Law and The Twenty Years’ Crisis respectively. I argue that in place of universalist formulae and imperatives, Hegel and Carr offer more adaptively organic ethics based in judgment. The second element of the paper revolves around the question of how to think about ethics in this fluid manner. I argue that the Hegel-Carr dialectical mode of theorising the relationship between politics and ethics offers a powerful means of navigating the space between what is morally desirable and politically necessary that is more productive than the Kantian insistence that politics must bend its knee before morality.
Author: Seán Molloy (University of Kent) -
In much contemporary critical theory, Hegel is cast as the central figure against which thought must constantly strain. Paradoxically, however, we can speak to or against Hegel in terms that nonetheless remain deeply Hegelian. In this vein, this paper recuperates Hegel’s reading of the antinomies of work and labor, at once economic and ethical, individual and social, to examine the limits and possibilities of the Hegelian resolution of these antimonies in an ‘age of precarity. ’ Mediated principally by the modalities of recognition, work and labor enable the constitution of subjectivity and social relationality for the liberal subject whose sovereign being- for-self is always and necessarily, on a Hegelian account, being-for-another. The transformation of work and labor indexed under the name of precarity (namely the move from relatively secure to insecure, contingent, flexible work), however, registers the unravelling of the regulative ideals of self-mastery and sovereignty central to liberal accounts of the sovereign subject, and with it, the grammar of recognition that binds the two. Mobilizing readings of sections of Phenomenology of Mind and The Philosophy of Right, specifically Hegel’s account of the master-slave distinction and its overcoming, the paper develops an account of precarity in terms of the master/slave indistinction and the diremption of work and labor from the social grammar of recognition.
Author: Ritu Vij (University of Aberdeen) -
How can we embrace the philosophical knowledge(s) of the Past in understanding the disciplinary challenges of the Future in International Studies? The paper engages with this question reflecting on the juxtaposition of state and society in past, present, and future political thought, highlighting the interplay between politics and ethics. It seeks to discuss state and society through Hegel’s and Schmitt’s ‘past’ philosophical thought –influential for much of the ‘present’ IR– attempting to understand ‘future’ challenges. The concepts of state and society, the dynamics between them, and the manifestation of ethics and morality through them, are essential for present IR literature as state and society are located in the intersection of the international and the domestic, defining their distinction(s). Hegel has been fundamental in defining and distinguishing state and society in political terms, dialectically discussing the antithetical dynamics of their relationship, and identifying ‘ethical life’ as manifested through both state and society. Schmitt follows Hegel’s dialectic tradition in distinguishing state and society, but ‘ethical life’ for Schmitt is manifested only through the state. However, the state is designated elsewhere by Schmitt as predominant in the political domain, defined respectively by the friend-enemy antithesis; while ethics and morality are manifested through the society, predominant in non-political domains defined by economic, religious, moral, or aesthetic antithetical distinctions. The paper will discuss Hegel in juxtaposition with Schmitt, drawing attention to their respective interpretations of ethics and ‘ethical life’, in an attempt to understand state and society through the interplay of ethics and politics.
Author: Zoi Vardanika (University of Reading)
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Panel / Inclusion and Exclusion in Global Health CarilolSponsor: Global Health Working GroupConvener: Eva HilbergChair: Adele Langlois (University of Lincoln)Discussant: Adele Langlois (University of Lincoln)
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New molecular antibodies are revolutionizing treatments, but come at an increasingly problematic price for health services worldwide. In discussions about pricing, patients are effectively excluded yet very eager to access treatment. In 2015 patients challenged this exclusion in the UK by invoking the rights of the Crown for access to Kadcyla, an expensive yet potentially life-saving medicine that had been de-listed. This paper takes seriously this campaign’s claim of sovereign reassertion against the industry’s exclusionary monopoly position, which challenges but ultimately does not overcome the concrete mechanism enabling this exclusion – intellectual property (IP). By drawing parallels with other molecular sovereignty campaigns, the paper finds the concept of sovereignty unwittingly reinscribing the IP system’s deeply engrained biocolonial (Schwartz-Marín and Restrepo 2013) fiction of the world as terra nullius, a blank uninhabited canvas ripe for discovery, which continues to exclude patients from debates about the price of medicines, modifies claims of resistance into ultimately less challenging deliberations, and prevents a global challenge from arising. Instead of countering this fundamental exclusion, debates about sovereignty recast resistance in the global South as a matter of property and thus create further divisions in the struggle over the assignation of ownership.
Author: Eva Hilberg -
In this paper I argue that the discipline of international relations has thus far failed to conceptualise the global politics of mental health outside the traditional research themes of war, conflict, and security. Debates about mental health in international relations literature are usually concerned with either (post)conflict societies or the politics of trauma and rarely discuss the meaning of mundane mental health practices. Through empirical research into the history and contemporary rise of mental health anti-stigma campaigns I demonstrate how mental health politics increasingly follow neoliberal rationales designed to maximise workforce efficiency and lower healthcare costs. I therefore show that everyday encounters with mental health through anti-stigma programmes are meaningful sites for IR inquiry and should be taken seriously. This research draws on a post-structural methodology to interrogate how the discourse employed in anti-stigma campaigns produces neoliberal subjectivities while legitimising psychiatric knowledge as the framework through which western societies continue to comprehend mental illness. My research challenges the ontological bias of IR in the study of mental illness and shifts attention to the significance of putting under scrutiny the political power structures which determine our understanding of what it means to be mentally healthy in a world governed by capitalist logics.
Author: Jana-Maria Fey (University of Sheffield) -
The world is focused on the Sustainable Development Goals – 17 goals, 169 targets, developed to ensure that the distribution of resources for life around the world happens equitably such that, by 2030, there is health and life for all (www.sustainabledevelopment.un.org). In this context. a large proportion of the world’s population remains without equitable access to safe water and adequate sanitation, resulting in over 10% of the world’s burden of illness. Furthermore, this distribution is inequitably skewed, with the primary burden falling to those in low and middle income countries (LMICs), primarily in sub Saharan Africa (SSA). We know too that the greatest burdens related to water and sanitation fall on women and girls – time fetching water, lost time from school due to water-related shortages/activities as well as menstruation, the burden of taking care of sick children and family members when safe water and adequate sanitation are not available, the list goes on. Where there is a major gap in both knowledge and policy, however, is the role that gender based violence plays in the water security issue. We know that women are at risk of both physical and sexual violence when searching for water in remote areas at unsafe times of the day and night; we know that women are at risk of both sexual and physical violence when searching for a safe place to relieve themselves when sanitation facilities are not available and cultural norms invoke tropes of modesty; we know that women are subject to violence at the hands of their male partners when they do not successfully deliver on their domestic responsibilities, including provision of water. We know these things because of reports in the media and because of the stories women tell other women. We do not, however, know these things systematically and rigorously in a way that would allow us to add to the body of knowledge around water security and health or provide evidence that could be used in influencing policy toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Prior to embarking upon such a complex, culturally sensitive research program, we have explored alternative ontological and epistemological mechanisms for doing this well, and doing it right. In so doing we have explored a range of epistemologies from allyship, integrated knowledge translation, community based participatory research, among others. We light on what we think is the most comprehensive north star for this type of research: this involves a set of 6 principles established by the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research (https://www.ccghr.ca/resources/principles-global-health-research/). These principles have recently been mandated by the national health research council in Canada (Canadian Institutes for Health Research) across all areas of medical and health research funding. In this paper, we explore their meaning and application to the question of water security and gender based violence for without water (SDG6), there is no life; without life, no health (SDG3); without the empowerment of women (SDG5), there is neither.
Authors: Susan J Elliott (University of Waterloo) , Katrina Plamondon (University of British Columbia )*
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Panel / Masculinities and Queer Perspectives in Transitional Justice Collingwood RoomSponsor: Gendering International Relations Working GroupConvener: Philipp Schulz (University of Bremen)Chair: Heleen Touquet (University of Antwerp)Discussant: Brandon Hamber (Ulster University)
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A generation after the end of the Croatian war of independence, when young people’s entire lives as students, citizens and family members have been lived amid what transitional justice advocates hoped would be Croatia’s transition into a society able to separate individual and organisational responsibility for war crimes from the moral significance of a war of self-defence, the predominance of what Dejan Jović has termed the congratulatory and uncritical ‘myth of the Homeland War’ continues to structure Croatian public discourse instead. One cause of its pervasiveness, this paper argues, is the extent to which narratives grounded in wartime imaginations of ‘defender’ (soldier) masculinities and contentions emerging from the early postwar production of ‘veteran’ masculinities have become embedded in other sociocultural domains that provide important points of identification for young people as well as what is now their parents’ generation who fought the war; moreover, as queer perspectives remind us, the affective entanglements of such identifications are not even limited to boys and men. The idea of ‘transitional’ justice thus implies much deeper transformations in societal relationships to politicised veteran masculinities, beyond what self-described transitional justice initiatives can achieve on their own.
Author: Catherine Baker (University of Hull) -
Delineating Perpetratorhood: On race, masculinities and fighting impunity for sexual violence in DRC
This chapter examines delineations of ‘perpetratorhood’ in efforts to fight impunity for sexual violence in conflict. Over the last decade, responding to sexual violence in conflict has become an established priority in international peace and security policy; fighting impunity through local courts and transitional justice mechanisms is deemed central to delivering justice for survivors and deterring future perpetrators from committing similar crimes. The adoption of UN Security Council resolution 1820 (2008) – establishing sexual violence as a threat to international peace and security – marked a clear turning point in this regard. While pervasive across armed conflicts, testimonies of sexual violence documented in eastern DRC were an important impetus for and focus of such developments. Indeed, the experiences of Congolese women and girls at the hands of ‘armed men in uniform’ became quint-essentialised – that is, defining of the (perceived) nature of the harm, its victims and its perpetrators. Given the myriad forms of sexual violence committed in conflict, however, who the victims and perpetrators of sexual violence are in such settings is far from inevitable.
Focusing on the ‘male perpetrator,’ this paper critically examines gendered and raced imaginaries in international peace and security policy and their situational implications in legal practice in eastern DRC. Drawing on extensive research conducted at the UN headquarters in New York, the first part of the chapter traces deliberations leading up to the adoption of key UN Security Council resolutions addressing sexual violence in conflict. Illuminating the micro-politics behind the macro-policies, the author foregrounds the role of institutional imperatives and political dynamics in defining the gendered and raced parameters of conflict-related sexual violence – and perpertratorhood specifically – for the purposes of the Council. Subsequently, and drawing on data collected with judicial actors in eastern DRC, the chapter offers a close appraisal of efforts of fight impunity for sexual violence through local courts in practice. Doing so, it underscores how, and with what effect, clearly delineated policy definitions obscure more complex realities of operationalising justice for sexual violence in practice.
Author: Chloé Lewis (Oxford University) -
The on-going war in Syria has seen acts of violence and discrimination being committed against persons of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions (SOGIE) by armed actors across the political and ideological spectrum but also by civilian actors, including direct and extended family members of the victims/survivors. This violence has occurred in a broader context of massive human rights violations against the civilian population and widespread impunity for these acts. Some of the violence experienced by persons of diverse SOGIE has been directed against them precisely because of their SOGIE, while other violence has occurred as a part of wider violence against civilians. For those persons of diverse SOGIE who have fled, the process of fleeing as well as their experiences in their new host countries have also often included a range of violences, of discrimination and denials of their human and civil rights.
Based on field research in Syria and Lebanon, this chapter examines the experiences of Syrian lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) persons’ experiences of violence during the Syrian War and in displacement, and their views on what would constitute justice for them. It aims to show the diversity of views and experiences among persons of diverse SOGIE, countering the tendency to see LGBTI as a homogenous population. It also raises complicated questions of what justice can look like for people whose options are limited to not returning to their home country or returning to a state and society which at best is passive hostile to their very existence or more usually actively violent and discriminatory. Furthermore, any quest for justice within Syria must happen within the parameters of a state government that has emerged victorious through often callous disregard of human rights norms. The chapter thus contributes to broadening the nascent academic debate of what transitional justice can mean from a diverse SOGIE perspective of if indeed the channels usually used for transitional justice are in any way workable in a situation such as in Syria and for the LGBTI population.Authors: Henri Myrttinen (Mosaic Beirut) , Charbel Maydaa (Mosaic)* -
The queer movement in Sri Lanka has often been elided into the liberal civic space and neglected both in the scholarly discourse and praxis of queer politics in the region. In addressing the gap, this chapter seeks to understand the ways in which queer movements in Sri Lanka evolve in the contemporary post-war and transitional political landscape. I focus on how queer movement in Sri Lanka responded to the period of 52 days of constitutional coup from late October 2018 – a critical juncture of the transitional period in Sri Lanka.
In late October, 2018 President Maithreepaala Sirisena removed Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe and eventually suspended the parliament which was later declared unconstitutional by the supreme court of Sri Lanka paving the way to the restoration of the prime minister and the cabinet. During the period between the removal of the prime minister and the Supreme Court ruling the island nation has witnessed unprecedented level of public protest demanding democracy and president to respect the rights of the people. During the coup, President and his aides accused sacked prime minister and his closed circles of decision makers are ‘Butterflies’ a term that is widely understood as derogatory and carries the meaning of effeminate men with irresponsible behaviour. President’s accusation was regarded as a hate speech against queer community in Sri Lanka and was proactively responded by the queer communities and allies in a common front called ‘Butterflies for Democracy’ (B4D).
Since then, B4D was able to exploit the momentum against president Sirisena. It has strategically aligned demand for democracy with queer rights. B4D emerged as not just a movement for queer rights but also for democracy through its intersectional approach to the crisis which paved way for mainstreaming and cultivating much needed empathy for queer rights in Sri Lanka. It has elevated the queer movement in Sri Lanka from being mono-causal to multi-front intersectional political agency. This paper traces the strategies, trends and ideas deployed by the B4D during late October 2018 to January 2019. The study is also informed by the reflective approach as the author is also part of the B4D movement. In addition to that, further data collected through interviews with activists who had been part of the B4D and an archival research. The B4D movement was able to successfully exploit the momentum created by an injurious speech in Judith Butler terms. It presents a relatively success story of a queer movement in global south particularly a conflict affected country with populist nationalism and how queer movement in the global south can deploy intersectional approach in mainstreaming queer rights. B4D was able to device political strategy which brought queer rights of the queer communities and democratic rights of the citizens of Sri Lanka and thereby creating an intersectional political struggle that led to increased support for the queer rights in Sri Lanka.Author: Waradas Thiyagaraja (University of Colombo & University of Bath)
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Panel / Mobilities, Subjectivities, and Technologies Martin Luther KingSponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working GroupConvener: PPWG Working groupChair: Patrick Hughes (Queen's University Belfast)
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Contemporary conceptions of cities in global politics (e.g., “networked cities” (Curtis 2016), “planetary urbanisation” (Brenner and Schmid 2012), or postcolonial critiques of Eurocentric bias in the notion of “global cities” (Robinson 2006)) disrupts the conceptual, subjective, and spatial hierarchies of “local” within “global”. This challenges critically-inclined scholars to see, feel, and know the urban/global politics interface differently by attending to neglected sites, subjects, and methods (e.g.: Closs Stephens 2016, McLean 2018). We respond to this challenge by rethinking the political agency of urbanization. Building on Shapiro’s approach to the “aesthetic subject” – the subject that mobilises thinking – we ask: what global politics can be seen, felt, and known when we approach the city as an “aesthetic subject”? The paper engages two sites that enact the urban as aesthetic subject: the production of “the urban” in fiction in the novels of China Miéville (e.g.: The City and The City (2009), The Last Days of New Paris (2016)); and the fashioning of “the urban” through textiles and dress in city museums in London and New York. Drawing on accounts of the circulations that fix and value subjects within aesthetic (Entwistle 2009) and affective (Ahmed 2009) economies, we use these sites to witness the agential capacity of the urban emerge from circulations that “stick” and confer aesthetic subjectivity, and to witness other circulations that “slip” and slide from view.
Authors: Matt Davies (Newcastle University) , Delacey Tedesco (University of Exeter) -
Migration is commonly imagined as an issue of space. Yet it necessarily takes place in time. Borders and bordering practices enforce the assignment of persons to territory. This spatial imaginary is continuously disrupted by those not in their ‘proper’ place, such as refugees, (irregular) migrants, stateless persons and even dual nationals, however. Although shoring up the system through infrastructure and increasingly restrictive regulations is presented as a way of securing and uniting communities against their outside, doing so divides societies as it disregards insiders’ affective, personal and familial relations across borders. What is at issue are not least people’s claims to be at home. While much critical analysis of migration introduces temporality by thinking in terms of process, emergence and so on, there seems as yet little work that explicitly reflects on temporality as an issue in itself. This paper thinks through the problem of temporality in relation to political subjectivity by examining how home is made over time and its implications for political subjectivity. Taking seriously the becoming-space of time challenges the conceptual duality of citizen and migrant in significant ways and therefore impacts how we should think power and governance in the international.
Author: Maja Zehfuss (The University of Manchester) -
Much has been discussed about the sensation of ease of movement as a central factor in the creation of understandings of “freedom” as realised through travel under contemporary liberal governmentalities (Bigo, 2005; Urry, 1990). However, less has been said about how the technologies of infrastructure that support this movement engender subjectivities of mobility and freedom amongst those for whom such travel is not a reality, nor how such subjectivities can enable conditions of precarity amongst those who develop them.
Based off twelve months’ ethnographic fieldwork in a tourist beach town in Brazil’s northeast, Praia da Pipa, I look at one such infrastructural technology: the road to the town. By looking at the way that residents of this town use the road in their daily lives, I consider the often-surprising ways that they engage with the subjectivities of mobilities it enables. Taking the perspective that the road is a relational (Harvey, 2010) infrastructure, I argue that the aesthetics of modernity it introduces to the town create a normative vision amongst residents of the benefits of travel. Moreover, I argue that in Pipa, the centrality of colonial geopolitical imaginaries of paradise underwrites these subjectivities of modernity in order to enable the further entrenchment of precarious employment practices.
Author: Harriet Cansino (Newcastle University)
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Panel / Narratives, struggles and violence in Africa: perception, ritual, practice and memorialisation Swan RoomSponsor: Africa and International Studies Working GroupConvener: Laura Routley (Newcastle)Chair: Laura Routley (Newcastle)
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This paper focuses on the ‘mine’ as the space in which rural and urban economies meet. Specifically, I discuss the colonial migrant labour system to cast light on the ways in which the Marikana mine in South Africa acts as an important marker on people’s movement from rural to urban spaces. The meeting point between rural and urban economies is a zone of transition and precariousness, shaped by intersectional inequalities. The case study of the Marikana mine reflects on the extent to which racialised histories are continued in the present, whilst equally shaping gender and class relations. A mnemonic reading of the ways in which migrant labour is interpreted by the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum will reflect the extent to which the control of mobilities is not just a remnant of history, but continues to operate in the country’s post-apartheid neo-liberal system. I suggest that the change from colonial to neo-liberal economies has not significantly alleviated gendered, classist and racialised inequalities, but instead risks perpetuating them. It is particularly in urban peripheries, such as the mines, that the frictions between rural and urban economies meet and produce a specific set of mobilities and immobilities.
Author: Stefanie Kappler (Durham University) -
In the shadows of Iraq and Afghanistan, postcolonial East Africa has emerged as a new frontier for the so-called private security industry, though one enmeshed with wider patterns of continuity in the circulation and constitution of force in relating both to decolonisation and legacies of settler-colonialism. This paper is based on extensive and immersive multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork with transnational security professionals in Kenya, Somalia and Tanzania. This includes contractors for private military companies (PMCs), security consultants, humanitarian security professionals, and a variety of other associated metaphorical titles including ‘resilience’ or ‘stabilisation’ professionals. This ‘contractor community’ is bound by shared military background, culture and experience, and various rituals and practices translated from the military play a crucial role in socialising contractors into this community. The paper stresses the importance of taking seriously the contradictions inherent in such security work. ‘Security’ is an occupation, but also a rationale for escape, devoid of content whilst imbued with meaning. Significantly, these individuals do not cast themselves as the modern purveyors of corporate violence fighting in ‘new wars’, but instead imagine themselves as engaged in a far older struggle, articulated through imperial yearning and the figure of the colonial ‘frontier soldier’. Drawing on Ann Stoler’s notion of ‘imperial debris’, I show how the collective historical memories of these contractors are an important facet of the habitus of this particular ‘community’. Some members of this transnational community of contractors circulate literature in the form of colonial travelogues, recounting the experiences of British soldiers fighting in the wars of decolonisation, and recasting their own role in similar terms. The broader effect of this has been a revival of imperial epistemologies in both habitus and praxis of transnational security professionals. I conclude that this framing is entwined with the particular settler colonial histories of the region but that such colonial nostalgia is fundamentally a reaction to the disquiet of the liberal present and more specifically declining western power and authority, as well as the perceived breakdown of traditional military roles.
Author: Jethro Norman (University of Leeds) -
The paper will argue that it is useful to view published humanitarian memoirs in the context of the humanitarian ideal of témoignage, or witnessing, but that the genre also draws heavily on tropes from travel writing which clouds this. Stories have always been key part of the humanitarian endeavour from Henry Dunant and the memoir that launched a movement to the rogue French doctors whose ‘refusal to remain silent’ splintered that movement. These developments have occurred in an international geo-political context in which there is ‘an emergent culture of storytelling that presents carefully curated narratives with pre-determined storylines as a tool of philanthropy and statecraft’ (Fernandes, 2017: 2). The paper will consider memoir as a particular form of humanitarian storytelling which occupies an interesting space between entertainment, in which we could think about the narratives in the tradition of travel writing or adventure story, and testimony, of atrocities witnessed. Taking the conflicts in Sudan and South Sudan as key site of this practice, the paper will consider how these tensions manifest and construct particular ideas about the figures of the aid worker and aid recipient, as well as projecting images of Sudan and South Sudan that rely on problematic tropes of Africa.
Author: Róisín Read (University of Manchester) -
The Lake Chad region has recently attracted the attention of the international community as a textbook example of a complex security emergency that is exacerbated by climate change: Despite President Buhari’s best efforts to combat Boko Haram, the Islamist insurgency continues to thrive in Nigeria’s northeast and across the border into Niger, Chad and Cameroon, capitalizing on existing systemic weaknesses and affecting the lives of over 10 million people. This paper investigates the relationship between climate change, the impact of government policies and Boko Haram's successful recruitment tactics in Lake Chad. It argues that climate change has already affected the living conditions for millions of people but that this situation has been exacerbated by an over-zealous government and military response to Boko Haram in the region. As a result, this has inadvertently created an opportunity for the terrorists to exploit, enabling them to capitalise on existing political frustration and dire economic conditions. As a result, the Boko Haram faction around Lake Chad has experienced a revival, establishing themselves in the region with a long-term economic and recruitment strategy.
Author: Caroline Varin -
Since the emergence of Boko Haram and its terrorist activities in Nigeria, the issue of deradicalisation has become a central issue worthy of analysis. However, central to this issue has been the successful measure of the efficacy of deradicalisation programme. While much emphasis is accorded the measurement of deradicalisation through recidivism, it seems little is accorded the community to which the deradicalised would be reintegrated or their ideational perceptions of the group and what counts as acceptable behaviour. This paper sought to address this issue through exploring the perceptions of participants on Boko Haram. To achieve this, a qualitative method was employed alongside semi-structured interview of 24 Christian and Muslim participants recruited from Lagos and Plateau States in Nigeria. Data was analysed using Thematic analysis from a social constructionist theoretical position. Based on the analysis, it was found that the perceptions of participants towards the group were mostly criminal and negative. The implication of which could have an effect on shaping relations and acceptance of successfully deradicalised ex-Boko Haram members. In essence, the findings contributes to and would be helpful in informing the success of deradicalisation policies through the improvement of counter-narratives from the public to aid successful re-integration of ex-combatant into society.
Author: Tarela Ike (Teesside University)
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Panel / Power and Order in International History Bewick RoomSponsor: British International History Working GroupConvener: Patrick Finney (Aberystwyth University)Chair: Patrick Finney (Aberystwyth University)
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The Red (or Flanders) Poppy has long been established across Great Britain as a favourite symbol of remembrance, punctuating the autumn calendar of mundane British civil religion. Since the turn of the century, however, the Poppy has also adorned an ever-widening range of objects, been worn for ever longer periods, and served to convey an increasingly hegemonic and confident kind of militarism. On the back of recent scholarship affirming the value of pacifist thought in politics and international relations, and adopting a Tolstoyan lens to sharpen its theoretical contributions, this paper articulates a first- and second-order pacifist critique of this drift. The first-order critique exposes the narrative inconsistency, the selective memory, and the limits of the patriotic solidarity expressed by the Poppy’s contemporary framing. The second-order critique examines the interests served by this framing across the military-industrial-entertainment complex, the contrast between memorial posturing and neo-colonial geopolitics, and the British government’s approach to caring for the priorities of its war veterans. The Red Poppy and its associated commemorations are thus shown to function like a sacred ritual in British civil religion, silencing in the process those voices that seek to question orthodox narratives about British war history and foreign policy, and othering as suspicious, uncivil, and even dangerous those who since the Great War have been saying: ‘Never Again’.
Author: Alexandre Christoyannopoulos (Loughborough University) -
This paper presents results from an ongoing project examining the use of history in the construction and communication of narratives, including political myths, which promote a post-Brexit global orientation and identity for the UK. The mainly English and C/conservative advocates of one such influential Eurosceptic narrative, identified as Global Britain, infuse it with analogous and non-analogous historical content with the aim of situating the UK outside of Europe and alongside ‘kith and kin’ societies and peoples in Britain’s former colonies. The Global Britain narrative accomplishes this through the communication of a positive and harmonious historical vision of the UK’s colonial and post-colonial ties with other, yet portrayed as very similar, Commonwealth countries and peoples. At the same time, historical language is used in the depiction of the UK and its people as ‘Un-European’, which further contributes to the aim of Global Britain’s advocates – helping the British people imagine a more democratic and prosperous future beyond Europe.
This work is rooted in the conviction that an interdisciplinary and mixed methods approach – one that incorporates elements of political science, history, and linguistics, as well as qualitative and quantitative methods facilitated by digital analytical tools – can lead to innovative and nuanced insights into the construction of the international identities of nation-states, including inter-state transnational identities. Through the application of computational methods to analyses of a substantial digitised corpus of Brexit and European Union-themed parliamentary speeches, another of the research goals in this project is the development of an original theory on the use of history as a functional yet attractive feature of language that contributes to the persuasiveness of political narratives.
Author: Mark Ølholm Eaton (Aarhus University) -
The belief in American exceptionalism has its historical roots back in the Colonial period, emphasizing uniqueness and superiority of American nation in the world history. This has served as an ideological impulse to divide “New World” territories and “Old European” continents. The narrative of American exceptionalism began with a metaphorical expression made by John Winthrop who described the Puritan community as “a City upon a Hill” in 1630 but this has changed over time. This article aims to demonstrate the belief in American exceptionalism is a core component of American identity to uphold U.S. foreign policy objectives, but such a diplomatic convention has been corroded by the caprices of President Donald Trump in foreign policy activities. As a result, I argue that Trump’s ideological fantasy has gone out of the myth of American exceptionalism embraced by most of his predecessors. This article will first explain the origin of the narrative and how it has developed over time. Based on historical generalization, American exceptionalism was to reduce internal contradictions that motivated policy but Trump on the other hand tried to widen internal contradictions that hardened American identity. The article reaches into a conclusion that the discrepancies between his antagonism and lofty slogan presented inconsistency in nature which made him out of the conventional trajectory pattern of American exceptionalism.
Author: Yu Cheng Teng (National Yunlin University of Science and Technology) -
Why do powerful states resist temptations to withdraw from international regulatory regimes, when they could do so, when tensions with other states are deepening, and when the regulated activity is embroiled in security dilemmas? To examine the question, we consider the case of Britain’s relations with the first international regulatory authority, the International Telegraph Union (ITU), formed in 1865. Having joined late in 1871, in 1901 Britain seriously contemplated leaving the ITU. Britain’s adherence to the 1884 Submarine Cable Convention, the other part of the nineteenth century international telecommunications regime, was with a security reservation. Yet, despite wars of national unification in Europe and imperial conflicts, Britain became ever more closely involved with the ITU and with German and other European countries’ international telegraphy before 1914, even as the country was preparing for cable-cutting in a war with Germany. Because many conventional approaches have proven unsatisfactory (6 and Heims 2018, BIHG stream at BISA), this paper presents a fresh explanation, using neo-Durkheimian institutional theory. Comparing three subperiods, it shows that specific forms of social organisation in government cultivated a particular types of institutional buffering between security and commercial policy for telegraphy, which sustained commitment even as conflict deepened. Resilient commitment is explained with cumulative equifinality in institutional orderings in three subperiods but this does not constitute path dependence. The paper argues that the approach will have wider application in understanding international regimes.
Authors: Perri 6 (Queen Mary University of London) , Eva Heims (University of York)* -
Remarkably few international economic regulatory bodies disappeared in the last deep deglobalisation of the 1930s. How did they survive the threats from deglobalisation, or at least bequeath capabilities to their successors? Are there lessons for contemporary regulation threatened by deglobalisation? This article presents a fresh explanation, proposing three sets of interaction dynamics. We contrast neo-Durkheimian institutional processes of ordering interacting with structural features of regulated industries, and with short term political economy forces. We identify three different categories of international economic regulatory bodies in the 1927-1939 period. The article highlights hierarchical ordering in regulatory bodies for capital-intensive physical infrastructure crossing borders exemplified by the International Telecommunications Union, which survived through highly structured relations between departments of state across countries. This contrasts with individualistic ordering and brokering in politically vulnerable agencies with indirect regulatory powers such as the League of Nations Economic and Financial Organisation. Third, a group of regimes, formed in response to deglobalisation to defend themselves from falling commodity prices, such as the International Rubber Regulation Committee, exhibited enclaved ordering. We show why contrasting political institutional ordering emerged and was sustained in each, contributing to survival. The article concludes by considering comparative relevance for contemporary risks to international regulation.
Authors: Perri 6 (Queen Mary University of London) , Eva Heims (University of York)* , Martha Prevezer (School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London)*
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Panel / War care: Infrastructures of bodily destruction and regenesis History RoomSponsor: War Studies Working GroupConveners: Craig Jones (Newcastle University ) , Nisha Shah (University of Ottawa)Chair: Catherine Chiniara Charrett (University of Westminster)
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How do traumatically injured patients access healthcare in states and places where medical infrastructures have been destroyed, often deliberately, by military and paramilitary violence? In this paper I sketch a preliminary answer to this question in an examination of civilian trauma pathways in and beyond Gaza. I attend to the wound as an analytic (Dewachi, 2015) and follow wounds across borders in order shed light on the precarious condition of what now constitutes a wounded class across the Middle East. I suggest that the injury-inducing and maiming potential of war deserves more attention and that the afterlives of wounding are marked by a slow violence that is reconfiguring contemporary spacetimes of war.
Author: Craig Jones (Newcastle University ) -
As part of a broader data set of 100 patients, this paper maps out and details the trajectories of 10 Iraqi patients undergoing cancer care within Iraq and across borders before, during, and after the ISIS period. Due the the war-related barriers to access and the deterioration of health systems, Iraqis’ care-seeking trajectories are not linear but rather they often include private and public hospitals across numerous in-country and regional cities from Basra and Baghdad to Beirut and Damascus. The study provides a methodology for drawing connections between these dispersed clinical sites as well as the non-clinical spaces in which patients traveling for oncology receive help and support. The aim of the article is not merely to map out the locations of care in a spatial sense but also to tell the story of the illness journey and its social, psychological, economic and environmental dimensions. To this end, I include the voices of patients as they move across borders and engage the various struggles of life under chronic illness, displacement, and war. The ethnography of these journeys also includes the etiological associations various actors affected by the illness draw between the appearance of the disease and potential causal agents/incidents, including but not limited to remnants of munitions such as depleted uranium, the shock of bombs/blasts, and the unending grief of losing loved ones over the course of 3 decades of war. Building on the previous work on ‘therapeutic geographies,’ the study reshapes anthropological methods for engaging illness trajectories under conflict while simultaneously providing new tools for oncologists treating war-affected patient populations. A failure to understand the journey and the story of the illness prevents oncologists from having constructive and helpful conversations with patients around barriers to and expectations of care and healing.
Author: Mac Skelton (The American University of Iraq, Sulaimani) -
A ‘signature injury’ of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been associated with ‘mental or physical deficits’, and ‘difficulties with attention, memory, concentration, and impulsiveness.’ Treatment is designed to assist the injured in ‘reaching maximum levels of independence’ (Military.com 2019). This article examines this treatment, focusing on the psychiatric care offered in some cases, and the gendered, raced, arguably ‘posthuman’ relationship engendered in the process between the soldier-patient and state-caregiver. Critical scholarship on the rehabilitation of those diagnosed with ‘invisible injuries’ such as TBI and PTSD has pointed to ways that treatment is bound up with and reinforces normative heteromasculinities in the service of an ongoing national self-construction project in which the body of the wounded soldier figures as an object of anxiety and tension. Building on such ideas, this work argues that one must also read within these regimens the US military’s deep investment in certain instrumental conceptions of techno-medically mediated ‘posthumanity’. This ‘posthumanity’, mobilized both explicitly and implicitly by the military and national security state, functions as a way to manage a complex and paradoxical relationship engendered between the injured soldier and the state, with implications for the way gender, race, and security come to be configured.
Author: Lena Moore (University of Cambridge) -
Observations from Crimean and US Civil Wars remarked that more ‘disastrous’ wounds were marking the battlefield. The response was the birth of new techniques around trauma care and triage. Less well considered has been the development of wound ballistics, the study of the effects of weaponry on the body. Important for medical surgeons wishing to enhance treatment, equal effort was directed to devising experiments to test and maximize the ‘stopping power’ of weaponry. Focusing on early experimental testing and battle casualty surveys focused on the rapid development of the rifle’s conical bullets, I explore the search for the ‘militarily acceptable wound’. I argue that killing in and itself was an insufficient as a measure of death in war. Rather, killing had to be calibrated in specific ways. Death as a result came to have certain meanings: the type of wounds from particular rifles and bullets indicated not just how crossing the line from life to death was possible but permissible, a ‘convention’ of modern war. Transforming wounds from medical specimens into the materiel of war, I situate wounding as ‘martial tactic’ in which dead bodies are more than consequences but come to shape weapons. Overall, I contend that bullets and dead bodies together make up an ethical infrastructure through which certain deadly weapons become desirable.
Author: Nisha Shah (University of Ottawa) -
The body of war is a stereotypically a male body. Though there is arguably less consensus than ever about the ways in which war and political violence are gendered, men’s bodies continue to be the most common material for the production of warriors, the experience of combat trauma, the repair-work of prosthesis and the promise of cyborg enhancements. War is not only a kind of effect of masculinity, but also a crucible for it. In this contribution I explore some traces of the project of disciplining men’s bodies, not to ready them for war but to rid them of bellicosity. These traces include, but are not limited to, feminist castration fantasies from the 1970s to the 1990s as a response to wartime sexual violence; the sex strike as a deterrent from Lysistrata to the Liberian civil war; the idea of sexual violence across the war/peace boundary as a public health epidemic; and the recent metaphor of ‘toxic’ masculinity as a murderous strain to be identified and treated. Though these visions are sometimes themselves violent, they are proposed in the name of a wider biopolitical care: as technologies and procedures for achieving feminist peace, or at least a successor feminist political order. I explore the continuing lure of the body as a target for both martial and anti-martial projects, and situate biomedical metaphors in a broader history of the governance of masculinity.
Author: Paul Kirby (Centre of Women, Peace and Security, London School of Economics)
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Panel / War, emotion and foreign policy Parsons RoomSponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working GroupConvener: EPIR Working groupChair: Anupama Ranawana (Oxford Brookes University/University of Roehampton)
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Though psychic trauma may be an essential part of the human condition, in recent decades its interpretation via the PTSD diagnosis has had profound political consequences. This article examines the political roots of PTSD’s codification in 1980’s DSM-III and the disorder’s subsequent impacts on American foreign policy discourse, drawing on historical analysis and comprehensive datasets of presidential papers and debates from 1969-2016. Its chief findings are twofold. First, even though PTSD was added to the DSM in 1980 and emerged in academic trauma studies during the 1990s as a potent cultural script, American leaders only began commonly referencing the disorder and its cognates in public rhetoric around the 2008 presidential cycle, five years after the US invaded Iraq. But while PTSD was introduced in these discourses most explicitly in the context of Democratic criticisms of the Iraq War, it has since become a common trope across the political spectrum. Second, critical examination reveals that increased attention to PTSD has served to blur important lines around the concept of war. The PTSD diagnosis and the therapeutic governance it inspires have subtly eroded war’s implicit spatiotemporal limitations, extending its consequences into an unknown future and outside the warzone, onto the home front. Further, this erosion has blurred the pivotal distinction between victim and perpetrator, with profound normative consequences. These findings not only problematize key assumptions in American foreign policy discourse, but also help reveal the larger fragility of psychic assumptions embedded in key International Relations’ theories.
Author: Adam Lerner (Royal Holloway, University of London) -
This article explores the role of trust and mistrust in US-Iranian nuclear deal through Bayesian realist premises. Contrary to hard-nosed realist approaches, according to which state possess rather fixed motivations as they all aim to survive under anarchy, Bayesian realist outlook believes that states’ motivations vary regarding to different contexts. Moreover, states as rational actors have tendency to calculate the motivations of others accurately in the long-run. Looking at the Iranian nuclear deal allows us to understand that states’ behavioral transformation is an indicator of parties’ changing levels of trust towards each other. Even if each side’s beliefs that the other side is trustworthy or the other makes cooperative gestures in the first step, there is no guarantee that the nuclear deal will be continued in the future. Due to there is the possible belief that exploiting the cooperation by one side for its own sake, there is possibility of the level of trust one another can change. In that regard, the nuclear deal as a historical agreement gives a chance to verify that the parties’ beliefs about others’ motivation. Despite withdrawal of the nuclear deal by the Republican Trump presidency, the nuclear negotiations started when the term of a hard-liner Ahmadinejad. Ultimately, the parties’ beliefs about the others’ trustworthiness or untrustworthiness converge on correct one through the deal. Thus, the author asserts that possibility of the sustainability of the Iranian nuclear deal would depend on the states’, as unitary rational actors’, possibility of changing level of trust rather than the leaders’ political propensity.
Author: SELMA IMAMOGLU (Durham University) -
In the past decade, Turkish foreign policy has decisively moved away from the EU and NATO and found new partners, such as Russia. Yet, despite manifest anger toward the West in general, Turkey’s alliance with the UK has remained stable, as evidenced by multiple high-level visits and cordial relations between the two countries’ leaders. What explains this durability in Turkey’s bilateral ties with the UK? This paper answers this question from the perspective of Ankara and by looking at Turkish elite perceptions of the UK. Primary research in the Turkish parliamentary and newspaper archives covering the last five decades, as well as interviews with former diplomats and politicians, show that Turkish elites believe that the UK treats the country with well-deserved respect and recognition. This self-pride, reflected through the eyes of a Western power, is evident in the way Turkish elites have referred to the Gallipoli Campaign of the First World War. The tragedy of war, which resulted in victory against British colonialism, has produced the persistent belief that a level playing field exists between Turkey and the UK, recognized not only by Ankara but also (and more importantly) by London. While explaining the basis of today’s close diplomatic relations, this finding also adds insights to the burgeoning literature on emotions and IR. Focusing on one particular tragic event in history and how it has constructed identities and diplomatic relations in the post-colonial era, the paper provides an alternative non-Western lens to emotional discourses, centred around pride, self-worth and respect.
Author: Yaprak Gursoy (Aston University) -
This article examines the role of emotions during the Arab Spring in Tunisia and
Egypt in the context of collective level emotions in mobilizations. Emotions are
understood as a catalyst whose mechanism of action is performed through
repertories. This article seeks to answer how emotions, having a triggering
role, are performed through repertoires while accelerating mobilization
against authoritarian orders, creating the intersection of individual and
collective level emotions in public spheres of Tunisia and Egypt, and thus
affecting the transnational diffusion of emotions. The significant reason to
address emotions is to explain what stimulated the Arab Spring and how it
spread over the region starting from Tunisia and Egypt. This article
synthesizes two literatures: International Relations (IR) and social movements
studies in light of emotions and components of repertoires which are as
follows: collective action, collective identity, symbolic politics, network society and information politics.Author: Efser Rana Coskun -
This paper explores how experiencing anger or fear affects foreign policy decision-making under uncertainty. The behavioral turn in IR has expanded our understanding of how heuristics and biases affect decision-making. However, the discipline has lagged in studying the pervasive influence of emotions. Research in cognitive psychology shows that emotions influence decisions by shaping the content of thought, the depth of thought, and goal activation. The Appraisal Tendency Framework (ATF) contends that different emotions affect appraisals of certainty, control, and responsibility in different ways. These appraisals in turn affect risk perceptions and decisions. This paper tests the ATF’s predictions concerning the effects of fear and anger by comparing John F. Kennedy’s deliberations during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and Richard Nixon’s decision-making preceding the US’ invasion of Cambodia in 1970. Consistent with the ATF’s predictions concerning fear, I find that Kennedy and his advisors were more willing to acknowledge uncertainty, viewed the events as unpredictable, and saw greater risk. In contrast, Nixon’s decision-making demonstrates greater certainty and control regarding the causes and consequences of events, lower risk perception, and unsystematic information processing. These findings provide important insights into how discrete emotions affect the cognitive aspects of deliberation and judgment.
Author: Manali Kumar (National University of Singapore)
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Panel / Water Security Across Scales: Intersections of the International Dobson RoomSponsor: Environment Working GroupConveners: Jeremy Schmidt (Durham University) , Ashok Swain (Uppsala University) , Cameron Harrington (Durham University)Chair: Cameron Harrington (Durham University)Discussant: Cat Button (Newcastle University)
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The purpose of this paper is to understand the relationship between securitisation and desecuritisation of water. In particular, the paper examines cases of transboundary water security of large rivers in which two or more states are involved. Much of the literature on water conflict have identified instances of securitisation of water, pointing to the problems of institutions and their effectiveness to regulated and facilitate joint water management. Recent studies on water diplomacy point to the processes of desecuritisation as a way to promote peaceful outcomes over water, as well as a way to alter the status quo of water allocation arrangements. The paper advances conceptual work by analysing how and when securitisation and desecuritisation occur and considers its temporal characteristic. Examining cases from South Asian and South-east Asian rivers of the Brahmaputra and Mekong basins, the paper argues that water diplomacy initiatives need to better account for the effects of desecuritisation, which are independent to cooperative action.
Author: Naho Mirumachi (Kings College London) -
Issues of race and ethnicity are not prevalent in studies of water security. Why not? In this paper, we present findings from a meta-analysis of academic literature published on water security since 1990. Our findings show fewer than 0.05% (n = 13 494) of water security publications explicitly address issues of either race or ethnicity. This blind spot prompted further considerations of how race and ethnicity may be indirectly or implicitly addressed through different categories of analysis including poverty, inequality, or indigenous rights. Together, our analysis of studies that explicitly or implicitly address issues of race and ethnicity suggests significant opportunities for future water security studies. We identify two. The first is to forge clearer conceptual linkages between race and water as co-variables in assessments of security and conflict. The second is to identify the differences that prioritizing race and ethnicity may make to water security studies that presently only implicitly address how the construction of race and ethnicity intersect with a range of social and environmental power relations (e.g. gender, class, infrastructure). Each area presents new opportunities for addressing the situated, multi-scalar challenges of water security.
Authors: Jeremy Schmidt (Durham University) , Cameron Harrington (Durham University)* , Ashok Swain (Uppsala University)* , Thuli Montana (Durham University)* -
Much of the literature on water security has so far tended to take a state-centric, end point dominated perspective. In particular there has been much attention to conceptualising and measuring state progression towards a pre-defined condition of optimal “water security”. For example, the various water security indicators are predicated on the notion that this endpoint is quantifiable and can be managed from the national level – e.g. the Asian Development Bank Water Security Indicators. More recently, a growing number of critical scholars, from geography, public health and anthropology especially, have begun to explore the idea that it is more important to understand the complexities of contemporary water insecurity as experienced by real people in households. The Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) global consortium has worked since 2016 to create the world’s first cross-culturally validated multidimensional scale for comparative analysis of household scale water insecurity. Launched through publications in the British Medical Journal in 2019, the HWISE scale is now being taken up by scholars and practitioners all over the world and is transforming our understanding of the everyday realities of water insecurity.
Author: Chad Staddon (UWE Bristol) -
Understanding water as a security concern has become a prominent framework for analysing global water politics and has implications for its governance. In recent years, a wealth of scholarship has critically examined the ‘security’ framing of politics in contemporary world politics (see for example, Fischhendler 2015; Pahl-Wostl, Bhaduri, and Gupta 2016; Fröhlich et al. 2018), with many studies highlighting the importance of transboundary or global water governance in resolving water insecurity (Swatuk et al 2015; Harris et al. 2015; Sultana and Loftus 2019). However, analyses of transboundary water governance rarely investigate the historical legacies that inform unspoken assumptions and practices over shared water – particularly as the development of early global governance and the first international organizations in 19th century Europe rested on contestations over the meaning of and collective practices concerning transboundary rivers. By analysing current institutions on the Nile and Mekong Rivers, this paper will highlight the ways in which today’s transboundary water management institutions are shaped by the legacies of imperialism that spread institutional models from Europe. In doing so, this paper argues that the imperial legacies that underpin these water governance institutions perpetuate problematic framings of water security that end up institutionalizing unequal power among actors.
Author: Joanne Yao (Queen Mary University of London)
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Panel / Architecture and Politics in Africa: making, living and imagining identities through buildings - panel 1 Parsons RoomSponsor: Africa and International Studies Working GroupConveners: Julia Gallagher (SOAS, University of London) , Daniel Mulugeta (SOAS, University of London) , Joanne Tomkinson (SOAS, University of London)Chair: Joanne Tomkinson (SOAS, University of London)
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This paper explores how Ivoirian statehood is established through its state buildings. It combines empirical readings of the state expressed through the material of the buildings themselves – their origins, styles, locations and relationships to the wider city – and as they are thought about by Ivoirian citizens who live with them. The paper uses these readings to discuss how aesthetic judgements describe a particular conception of the Ivoirian state – miraculous, remote and fragile. It uses the discussion of this particular African state to build towards an aesthetic theory of statehood. The work is underpinned by fieldwork carried out in Abidjan and Yamoussoukro in 2019 and art and architectural theory from the work of John Dewey, Hana Segal and V. Y. Mudimbe.
Author: Julia Gallagher (SOAS, University of London) -
This study explores ideas of citizenship, power and state ideology though a study of state secondary school buildings in Ghana and Senegal. States often use physical structures to project power and ideology within and beyond the nation – and where these structures manifest in the form of architecture, an additional element comes to play. The structures no longer function mainly as symbols, but also as sites for control, regulation, ceremony and more.
Schools in particular present unique opportunities as sites of control, and for the transmission and projection of state power and ideology. This is why colonial and post-colonial state authorities in Africa alike used state schools for the making (and unmaking of citizens) according to the aspirations of the ruling classes, their visions of society and their notions of their "place-in-the-world”. Yet, while state authorities attempted to use schools for these purposes, students, staff and others associated with schools did not always receive the lessons as planned. They reacted to these attempts at transmitted ideology and norms in different ways, actively participating in processes of inclusion and exclusion, appropriation and rejection, co-option and coercion. This paper brings aspects of these processes to the fore.
Author: Kuukuwa Manful (SOAS, University of London) -
University campuses have often embodied ideological concepts through architectural language. This can be seen in African countries that frequently used the creation of universities to produce or reinforce certain identities, especially when becoming independent states in the twentieth century. In 1975, the Sudanese government passed the University of Juba Act that resulted in the first public university in the southern region of Sudan. Consequently, a campus was constructed in a modernist tradition from the late ‘70s.
This paper highlights the University of Juba, South Sudan as one of few enduring physical manifestations of the peace process that ended the First Sudanese Civil War. The paper positions the university as an ideological manifestation of the progress envisioned in 1972 Addis Agreement that brought peace to Sudan, as seen through its architecture, course structure and student demographic. The author discusses the typology of universities as utopian experiments, gives a historical overview of the politics of Sudan and positions the University of Juba in the historical, cultural, social context of the country during its construction and opening in the late 1970s. The author concludes on the significance of universities in nation-building and comments on the present-day context of the University of Juba as the oldest higher-education institute in the young nation of South Sudan today.
Author: Awut Atak (University of Kingston) -
This paper uses the lens of popular perceptions about the architecture of the African Union (AU) headquarters building in Addis Ababa to understand the articulation of Pan-African collective identity. It reflects upon the ways in which the physical structure of the building is talked about, used as a reference, and assumed symbolic signification in popular consciousness, and the way in which these enable the contestation and consolidation of Pan-African identities. In so doing it illustrates how transnational political imaginations are mediated by the material experiences of different social actors. Bringing ethnographic work on materiality into dialogue with the literature on pan-Africanism, the paper aims to contribute towards a new approach to the study of the links between African regional organisations and the production of transnational collective subjectivity.
Author: Daniel Mulugeta (SOAS, University of London) -
The recent inquiry into the death of the late apartheid activist Ahmed Timol has sparked life into the fight for truth and justice in South Africa. This landmark case overturned a 1972 ruling that Timol committed suicide on the 10th Floor of John Vorster Square and concluded that he had been murdered. This on-going case seeks to prosecute a Security Branch officer who, amongst others, is alleged guilty of human rights violations.
This paper takes insights from the timelines of Apartheid activists who were tortured and subsequently killed in police custody. The choreography of these deaths in detention cases are heavily dependent on space and the architecture that housed them. Police stations, such as John Vorster Square, were used as facilitators in the torture and deaths of these activists. The intention of this paper is twofold: first, to reveal the complicit nature of architecture in the highlighted death in detention cases; and second, to address the larger challenge facing the South African judicial system of dealing with eye-witness accounts that show agency in memory and architectural contexts.
Author: Yusuf Patel (University of Johannesburg)
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Panel / Challenging international legal norms and institutions Collingwood RoomSponsor: International Law and Politics Working GroupConvener: Andrea Birdsall (University of Edinburgh)Chair: Andrea Birdsall (University of Edinburgh)
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In November 2017, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensuoda, formally requested permission from the Pre-Trial Chamber to open an investigation into the situation in Afghanistan. That request was rejected in April 2019 and is currently under appeal. Afghanistan had been the subject of a Preliminary Examination (PE) since 2007, along with several others, including the situation in Iraq (involving UK citizens) and Ukraine. All three of these situations involved potentially bringing under the ICC’s purview the conduct of citizens of three of the five Permanent Members of the Security Council (P5): the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia. For the ICC, PEs offer a possible way out of its current crisis – they are touted as a mechanism for positive complementarity, a means of demonstrating the Court is not wholly and unduly focused on Africa, and a way of flexing its muscles as a tool to ‘end impunity’ for serious violations. It is, however, a risky strategy. The US reaction was especially vociferous, with US National Security Advisor, John Bolton, threatening to destroy the Court if it proceeded with the investigation into Afghanistan, and he seems to have won the first round. The reaction of the UK was more conciliatory, on the surface at least, and Russia's strategy was largely to ignore it. This paper discusses each of the situations in turn and sets the responses of the P5 members involved in the context of the international and domestic politics of international justice. We argue that these PEs are highly significant for the future of the Court, but they may just as easily ‘kill’ it, as ‘cure’ its current malaise.
Authors: Rachel Kerr (King's College London) , Natasha Kuhrt (King's College London) -
Under President Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda, the current US administration questions, threatens, or disregards a wide array of longstanding international norms and institutions. This paper explores how America First might pose a significant threat to the global human rights regime as reflected in important institutions and norms. The Trump administration has withdrawn the U.S. from the United Nations Human Rights Council and almost completely de-emphasized human rights issues in its foreign policy statements. The U.S. has attempted to impose very strict new limits on individual claims of refugee status, despite international legal norms. The President has openly advocated the use of torture against alleged terrorists and their families. The administration denied travel visas to ICC personnel who are investigating alleged war crimes in Afghanistan. Most recently, the administration announced the creation of a new human rights panel focused on “natural law” which appears intended to make arguments which undermine protections for key groups. Drawing on the norm contestation literature and the concept of international normative transgressions, this paper will examine the dynamics and potential long-term impact of the US’ recent turn away from human rights, and question whether this represents a fundamental shift in US foreign policy or whether it is consistent with previous approaches.
Author: Kurt Mills (University of Dundee) -
In counterterrorism campaigns, when do democratic states resort to torture and when do they refrain from violating this fundamental human right? This paper examines how public debate – and public silence – contribute to enabling or constraining states from getting involved in torture. Drawing on the literatures on ‘rhetorical coercion’ and ‘shaming’, I outline how international human rights bodies and domestic critics have sought to shame Spain and the UK for their involvement in torture in recent decades. The Spanish government’s response was to use what I call ‘reverse-shaming’ to shun and discredit their accusers in an attempt to shut down public debate on the issue. This enabled the authorities to torture or mistreat suspected Basque militants for decades after Spain became a democracy. By contrast, the British government and its critics engaged in public contestation in which they constructed rival narratives concerning the effects of coercive interrogation. While the UK government made rhetorical manoeuvres which enabled it to continue its involvement in torture, the presence of this public debate was important for shifting the government’s position on some aspects of the issue and significantly reducing Britain’s involvement in torture over time. Based on a systematic discourse analysis of key sources in these two cases, this project aims to contribute to our understanding of the conditions under which democratic states may be induced to respect human rights.
Author: Frank Foley (King's College London) -
This paper examines how some states (e.g., Sudan, Kenya, and Rwanda) implicated in atrocity crimes have managed to wage effective international delegitimation campaigns against international criminal tribunals. This question is addressed through a comparative examination of the strategies that targeted states have deployed to undermine the international legitimacy of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslaiva and Rwanda as well as the International Criminal Court (ICC). State delegitimation campaigns commonly aim to refute a tribunal's narrative of state criminality by spinning a counter-narrative portraying the state as a victim of a politicized tribunal that has betrayed its lofty principles of impartiality. I argue that one type of targeted state – referred to as a "victor-victim" state and represented by the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front government – is ideally positioned to garner international support for its anti-tribunal delegitimation campaign and to spin an effective counter-narrative. Another type of state – referred to as a "loser-perpetrator" state and represented by Milosevic's Serbia – is particularly ill-positioned to do so. Finally, the paper shows that certain state delegitimation attacks can prove effective when they raise substantive concerns about the integrity of tribunal practice.
Author: Victor Peskin (Arizona State University) -
The agenda of eradicating torture emerged at the United Nations in 1945 in response to state atrocities committed during the second world war. However, the process of its recognition as a global norm stretched over a period of few decades involving multifarious actors in action at the UN. The United Nations has been engaged as an actor in making of an international norm against torture, eventually paving way for its legal recognition in 1984. But, being an intergovernmental organization, along with the states, it involved diverse actors influencing the process of defining the norm as well the extent of international jurisdiction. While torture has been defined and the move for its abolition defended on moral and legal grounds, the effect of politics between various actors at play in the UN along with the role of the organization and its bureaucracy as an entity in itself in making and working of the regime on torture remains ambiguous. This paper seeks to investigate the deliberations at the United Nations on the abolition of torture in order to analyse the complex process of norm-making in international organizations. It also seeks to use the lens of constructivism in order to examine the ‘Norm life cycle’ and its relevance for contemporary norm making at the UN.
Author: Heena Makhija
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Roundtable / Future Challenges for International Political Economy Katie Adie
This panel brings together a range of scholars working in the field of International Political Economy. The papel aims to (a) take stock of current scholarly trends within the field of IPE in the UK; and (b) refelect on 'future challenges' for the field. These include: 'blindspots' in IPE, Brexit, decolonising IPE, and re-thinking IPE from the perspective(s)of gender, work and religion.
Sponsor: International Political Economy Working GroupChair: Matt Davies (Newcastle University)Participants: Juanita Elias (University of Warwick) , Lena Rethel (University of Warwick) , Gabriel Siles-Brügge (University of Warwick) , Juvaria Jafri (City, University of London) , Matt Davies (Newcastle University) -
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Panel / Gender Approaches to International Politics: From the Micro to the Macro History RoomSponsor: Gendering International Relations Working GroupConvener: Kyle Grayson (BISA)Chair: Kyle Grayson (BISA)
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This paper adds to the argument in Critical Security Studies regarding women’s emancipation and its relationship to security. This will be accomplished by looking at the case of Chechnya and how the government has facilitated a return to traditional Adat customs after the wars that have seen women’s rights diminish. However, women’s NGOs in Chechnya are helping women resist this by taking their cases to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Specifically, child custody battles in divorce will be considered since this is denied to women under traditional Adat customs but is allowed in the Russian Federation and in the ECHR. This paper aims to investigate this relationship between the international and local government with NGOs brokering for women’s rights on behalf of their clients. Yet, the various laws and customs present in Chechnya create tension with petty sovereigns, which have implications for implementing successful rulings in the courts. This dynamic has enabled different NGOs to mobilize various narratives of women’s emancipation in order to contest this custom. Exploring this relationship will be achieved through discourse analysis of ECHR cases, NGO reports, news sources and interviews.
Author: Katie Mitchell (Queen's University Belfast ) -
Human rights abuse during armed conflict particularly on women has been distinctively and widely documented and therefore in the context of the discourse on Responsibility to protect wherein the mandate is to protect civilians, the questions on the security of women constitute an important aspect. Responsibility to Protect, particularly the Pillar II emphasis on “International assistance and capacity building” necessitates the intervention on the doctrine of responsible. Thereby outlining the interplay of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) with the themes of Women Peace and Security (WPS).
The paper seeks to critically explore multifaceted foreign policy approach of R2P and WPS foregrounding the particular examination on the existing commitments of R2P doctrine and how it can be applied in the interest of women’s rights in conflict situations and reconstruction. By outlining the themes of Women, Peace and Security the paper intends to analyze the configuration of R2P and WPS within the ambit of United Nations Security Council.
*Keywords
Responsibility to Protect; Women Peace and Security, Norm Diffusion; Gender equality; United Nations (UN); Peace Building;Author: Niamkoi Lam Niamkoi (Jawaharlal Nehru University) -
The People's Republic of China (PRC) has a long history of population control that aims to optimize the quantity, quality and distribution of the nation’s population. Women have long borne the costs of this state-managed reproductive modernisation. Even privileged urban middle-class women face heightened tension from the cultural and legal imperative to reproduce within heterosexual marriage and restricted timeframe (Xie, 2019). The demand to reproduce within these tightly regulated conditions has created a growing market in artificial reproductive technologies (ARTs). While ARTs were legalised in 2003 (Wahlberg, 2016), unmarried women are excluded from accessing such technology.
This paper explore the emerging phenomenon of single Chinese women crossing boarder to freeze their eggs in Western countries including the USA, UK and Australia. By outlining the key debates surrounding uncoupled reproduction in Mainland China, and exploring the PRC’s internal and national borders that must be crossed to gain access, we reveal the multi-layered reproductive stratifications under globalisation. Moreover, we demonstrate the tensions underlying egg freezing for single women themselves, as well as the impact cross border reproductive travel has on Chinese nationhood at a time when the state is trying to encourage its highly educated women to have more children under the Two-Child Policy since the nation is experiencing ‘a population crisis’. We pose further questions on to what extent this new phenomenon poses potential challenges to existing border between nations, as well as their interpretations of citizenship.Authors: Kailing Xie (University of Warwick) , Alison Lamont (University of Roehampton)
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Panel / Gender(ed) Knowledge through Art Armstrong RoomSponsor: Gendering International Relations Working GroupConvener: Ali Bilgic (Loughborough University)Chair: Kathryn Starnes (Manchester Metropolitan University)
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The Arab Apocalypse by Etel Adnan is a celebrated epic poem that forces the reader to become a witness to the destructive forces of politics, something that is, often, only described. Written as a response to the Lebanese Civil War, Adnan engages in a critique of (masculinised) politics through textual language and visual images, a feminist queer method that both alienates and captivates the reader. The result is a postmodern reflexive engagement with disaster that limits clarity. As the text of the poem becomes obfuscated by images, the reader is forced to make peace with their alienation and, at the same time, engage with the foreign by providing meaning to images that can only be described. By using Adnan’s Arab Apocalypse to engage in a feminist queer reading of politics this article highlights the overlooked and marginalised non-masculine and non-heteronormative affects. Specifically, and in relation to the work of Adnan, it uses the Lebanese Civil War to engage with regional and global politics by temporarily displacing masculine understandings, descriptions, and causality. In turn, it highlights the need to engage with feminist queer positionalities and experiences that emphasize alienation and non-hegemonic knowledge production.
Author: Andrew Delatolla (The American University in Cairo) -
The superhero genre of cinema has been around since the 1970s but has come to flourish since 2008 with the release of Ironman. During this time the US has been preoccupied with three major foreign policy challenges from the Wars on Terror, increasing tensions with Russia, and the rise of China. This has seen the US attempt to reassert its preeminence in response to these threats in a variety of ways. With the electoral success of Donald Trump in 2016 and the emergence of Trumpism as a masculine antidote to a perceived crisis of US global status, the superhero genre has come to embody an attempt to reestablish US order by reasserting its cosmic and masculine dominance in the face of a perceived loss of agency in an increasingly turbulent world. Building on feminist critiques of the masculine practices of US foreign policy and critiques of the hyper-masculine themes of 1980s action cinema this paper will argue that the superhero genre has become a site for the US to resolve the perceived crises of masculinity, identity, and global status since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It will do so by analysing the films from two trilogies within the Marvel Cinematic Universe that centre on the characters Iron Man and Captain America.
Author: Benjamin Coulson -
The proposed paper will examine the portrait of “revenge politics” or “eye for an eye politics” in US post 9/11 cinema as one of the examples of contestation of hypermasculinity in popular culture. The aim of this inquiry is to link the implications of construction of political phenomena in US cinema and presenting of hypermasculinity as a justification for violent and aggressive politics within the international arena. One of the underlying assumptions of this paper is that the mobilization of hypermasculinity in films concerning political and security phenomena contributes to the construction of widely supported opinion that violent and aggressive response to international crisis is still the most effective and moreover, justifiable one.
After the events on 9/11 dominated widely supported narrative that violent response to these events is the only acceptable one and that it has moral and rational merit. This paper will examine the connection of this narrative construction and reconstruction in American cinema to the contestation of hypermasculinity in these war movies concerning 9/11.
This paper will examine two mainstream films produced after 9/11: American sniper (2014) and Lone Survivor (2013), by the method of multimodal discourse analysis supported by the Foucauldian conception of discourse and power relations. From the theoretical point of view this paper rests on postmodern feminist ontology and poststructuralist epistemology and concepts of hypermasculinity, hegemonic masculinity and gendered identity of states.
This proposed paper could contribute not only to the pool of postmodern feminist literature in IR but moreover, to the broadening of the field of peace studies since this kind of inquiry has a potential to comprehend why it is widely believed that "we" have to fight in the first place and that the violent coercion is more effective and rightful than international law or negotiation.
Author: Anna Kotvalová (Charles University) -
This paper interrogates the role of performative art in capturing the shifting gender dynamics resulting from integration of women within the armed forces of Western liberal democracies. In particular, we analyse what specific subject-positions are embodied and performed in the plays, how women’s ‘right-to-fight’ aligns with or diverges from the integration of LGBTQ+ soldiers (‘where are the women?’ vs. ‘where are the queers?’), and most importantly, we analyse how theatrical art depicts conflict as the ultimate goal of soldiering. Drawing on our ethnographies of two theatrical performances from the 2019 Army@TheFringe programme (Hallowed Ground – Women Doctors in War and Dead Equal), interviews with artists, Facebook/Twitter feeds, and promotional materials in addition to findings generated as part of the wider research project on military culture in Scotland and Britain more broadly (2017-2019), we argue that although performative art brings gender equality and queer visibility agendas to public attention, its attempt to destabilise traditional heteronormative, patriarchal and violence-prone military culture remains limited due to: 1) a limited range of gendered subject-positions depicted in the plays, 2) the use of traditional gender hierarchies between those serving in Western militaries and the multiple Others, and 3) the decontextualized and depoliticised depiction of conflicts, past and present. These practices transform women and bearers of non-traditional gender/sexual identities into sovereign – patriotic and loyal - subjects committed to the mission of Western liberal - military-assisted - humanitarianism and neoliberal war-making, particularly prominent in the era of the Global War on Terror.
Authors: Emma Dolan (University of Aberdeen) , Nataliya Danilova (University of Aberdeen)*
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Panel / Innovation in Learning and Teaching: Theory and Practice Council ChamberSponsor: Learning and Teaching Working GroupConvener: Kyle Grayson (BISA)Chair: Ross Bellaby (University of Sheffield)
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Given the continued and increasing growth in military engagement with academia within the UK, we have seen an increase in the number of students who are undergoing under- and post-graduate education while they are either on secondment or still serving in post. The Army's Higher Education Pathway (AHEP) is a prime example of this. While this is commendable it is causing some friction as these particular students need to adapt to the demands of academic essay writing while still maintaining very particular forms of communication within their professional lives.
This paper proposes a way of easing this transition that should make it easier for military students to adapt to academic essay writing and make it easier for academics to engage with the constraints present in balancing the needs of their 'normal' students with the increasing number of military students they may encounter. This can be achieved through adapting the NATO order system currently employed by the military into a way to understand and communicate ideas within politics and International relations.Author: Patrick Finnegan (University of St Andrews) -
Student engagement plays a central role in teaching, learning and student outcomes. With the emergence of pressure from the Teaching Excellent Framework (TEF) and the Office for Students (OFS) both of the United Kingdom on contemporary higher education, the need to improve student engagement and satisfaction seems pressing. Such need is further compounded within the field of International studies, which seems to lack research that addresses student engagement from the perspective of a pedagogically oriented action research. This study addressed these issues by adopting Jean McNiff action research model as a means of incorporating students in the active action inquiry process. A qualitative method, which draws on four focus groups discussion comprising of eight students per focus group in modules such as Social Research Methods and Explaining Punishments were analysed using thematic analysis from a constructivist theoretical position. Based on the analyses, it was found that active integration of the students in the inquiry process seems integral in improving engagement. It was also found that, whilst external factors such as limited finance, family issues and working whilst schooling might play a role in students’ dis-engagement, designing teaching content that incorporates technology, improve collaboration and active involvement which take into context the students learning needs enhances engagement. The study recommends that incorporating students might be helpful in informing the improvement of teaching and best practice within the discipline.
Author: Tarela Juliet Ike (Teesside University ) -
This paper engages with the conference theme about how we ‘do’ international studies and how the field is shaped by worlds in flux. Specifically, this paper seeks to improve continuing professional development (CPD) experiences of Chinese government officials in British Higher Education. The study considers the application of constructivist learning approaches in CPD courses for Chinese officials, and challenges in doing so. This study identifies and suggests three types of teaching adaptations following critical reflection of my teaching experiences. These teaching adaptations are a response to- and accommodation of the short duration of the training programs, the seniority of the delegates, and the delegations’ expectations to learn fixed knowledge. Despite the adaptations to acculturate CPD courses to Chinese learning, divergent educational cultures influence student learning and experiences.
Author: Carolijn van Noort (University of the West of Scotland) -
Motivation is related to one of the most basic aspects of the human mind. Dörnyei (2001) argues that most teachers and researchers would agree that it has a significant role in determining success or failure in any learning situation. Therefore this paper will discuss the impacts of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) on motivation of foreign language learners. Furthermore, this paper discusses the causes which affect motivation. Since computers and other digital tools are a part of the learners’ everyday life thus role of ICT in language learning is immense. The paper will also show how utilization of ICT can help in impacting positively the motivation of foreign language learners.
The paper is an attempt to understand the key issues in overall study on ICT and foreign language learner’s motivation. In order to do so it primarily evaluates the overall development of ICT learning. Secondly the paper looks into the effect on motivation in Korean language learning and teaching, thirdly the paper takes the teachers to understand the implementation study of ICT and foreign learner’s motivation, In order to conduct, a larger research with both teachers and learners. Lastly the paper examines the implications and challenges while implementing the ICT based learning in all perspective.Author: Naveen Kumar Ranjan (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
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Panel / Interpretivist approaches to IR theory Daniel WoodSponsor: Interpretivism in International Relations Working GroupConvener: IIRG Working groupChair: Xymena KurowskaDiscussant: Hannes Hansen-Magnusson (Cardiff University)
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This paper contributes to the conference’s general theme of the future of international studies by responding to a particular question: “to what extent is process tracing a useful approach in the Copenhagen School’s framework of analysing security?” The paper claims the following three points. First, the deliberate choice and articulation of the method employed is crucial in conducting international relations research, as illustrated in the study of (de)securitization. Second, in keeping up with the persistent pursuit of engaging in cutting-edge international studies, process tracing offers an alternative method in securitization and its potential is yet to be fully explored. (Interpretivist) Process tracing reinforces the empirical significance of the new framework of analysis as this method aims to explain securitization through causal mechanisms in a manner that is consistent with the Copenhagen School’s commitment to a post-positivist meta-theory. Consequently, and third, as new techniques are further developed in applying IR theories, particular methods’ pitfalls, in this case, process tracing’s, have to be brought to the fore. Researchers then have to decide on the trade-off or on utilizing a combination of methods. These arguments are assessed using recent empirical literature involving interpretivist process tracing in understanding (de)securitization and this researcher’s on-going project on the Philippine foreign policy response toward the South China Sea disputes.
Author: Chester Yacub (University of Nottingham) -
In this paper, an argument is made to suggest that no theory of international politics can be articulated without mentioning at least one short-term present time perspective. The argument is based upon two primary functions that these time perspectives perform within a theory; they outline what the necessary and sufficient conditions of international politics are and how international politics is problematised within a theory. This paper unpacks both functions and their effects in detail to illustrate how short-term present time perspectives shape claims within a theory. The resulting insights indicate how these time perspectives delimit a theory and subsequently affect how claims about international politics in the past, present, and future are analysed, discussed, and understood by readers viewing international politics through a theory.
Author: Christopher Wheeler (Newcastle University) -
The work of Pierre Hadot has helped revive the idea of philosophy as a way of life – that is, philosophy not as a form of argumentative writing about abstract topics but as an ‘art of living’, a set of techniques aimed at shaping and remaking the self in the pursuit of wisdom. Although this conception of philosophy may seem overly personal, or even self-indulgent, historically it has engaged with concepts central to politics, such as community, power and identity. Unfortunately dialogue between these two fields is now scarce. In this paper I bring the literature on philosophy as a way of life into the discipline of politics and international studies, both in relation to our work as educators and as researchers. In our teaching, for example, we train our students to critically question the world around them. But do we train them to critically question themselves? How would we do so? What would be the value, and risks, if we did? As researchers, how would our approach to issues and our ways of writing about them differ if we took self-reflexivity seriously? How would ‘doing’ international studies change if we let ourselves be influenced by the connections between our own lives and the social and political worlds we study? The paper draws on a funded study conducted with staff and students at Newcastle University while broadening out the findings to consider the wider implications for international studies as a whole. In short, it imagines a future discipline which takes seriously, at all levels, the idea that the personal is political and the political is international.
Author: Michael Barr (Newcastle University) -
IR theory acknowledges several logics of action: consequentialism, appropriateness, practicality, and habit. These logics combine both the cognitive and the evaluative bases of action, i.e. whether actors think about what to do and the criteria they use for determining the value of alternatives. The reflective practical ethics of prudence, however, goes beyond the instrumental ethics of consequentialism, normative ethics of appropriateness, inarticulate know-how of practices, and routinized taken-for-grantedness of habits. I explore the logic of prudence and its consequences for political action, especially under uncertainty, drawing on Aristotle, Morgenthau, and Aron. I claim that the logic of prudence involves finding a balance between practical and representational knowledge by engaging reflective reasoning. Prudence is fed by habits and practices, considers the relative consequences of alternatives, and takes into account standards of appropriateness. Yet, as a cognitive process for informing successful action, prudence involves a distinctly situation-specific reflective logic of action. Conceived as a normative theory of how to think, the logic of prudence also offers a perspective on the cognitive basis upon which agents draw and identify the objects of their reasoning, and addresses remaining gaps in mainstream practice theory by returning reflective reasoning and action to the center of analysis.
Author: Manali Kumar (National University of Singapore)
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Panel / Perspectives of Security Threats Dobson RoomSponsor: European Security Working GroupConveners: Helena Farrand Carrapico (Northumbria University) , Arantza Gomez Arana (Birmingham City University) , Jocelyn Mawdsley (Newcastle University)Chair: Simon Sweeney (University of York)
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This paper investigates the trajectory of Polish defence policy following three political shocks. First was the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which put Polish security centre-stage. Second was the election of Donald Trump as US President and the uncertainty this has brought to European security, particularly the US commitment to NATO and relations with Russia. Finally is the UK’s decision to leave the EU, taking away one of Poland’s key allies in respect to how the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) should evolve. Considering Poland's position on the border of the EU and NATO, whilst being situated next to a country experiencing conflict, it is critically important that Poland's defence policy is assessed as this has implications for European security more broadly. Using strategic culture as an analytical tool, the paper will assess continuity and change in Polish defence from October 2011 to October 2019, analysing the different strategies taken by the Civic Platform and Law and Justice led governments during this timeframe. The paper will ascertain whether the country’s focus has returned to defending Polish territory as its core security task and what impact this has had on Poland’s force structure and international obligations.
Author: Laura Chappell -
Following the violent clashes between Euromaidan protesters and police in February 2014, Yanukovych was removed from power, and eventually replaced by Petro Poroshenko after the May presidential elections. Poroshenko’s attention soon turned to internal reforms and asked western support to implement reform processes. Police reform was particularly high on the agenda, due to the lack of civil society trust in the Ukrainian police, resulting from longstanding high levels of corruption and the disproportionate violence used during the Euromaidan protests. This paper compares the EU and US approaches to police reform in Ukraine, focussing specifically on the application of the principle of local ownership in the early stages of support. Local ownership has been of key interest in studies looking into security sector reform (SSR), and is particularly relevant in the case of Ukraine, due to the challenging civil society-police relations. The essay will contribute to the second generation SSR debate by examining the extent to which US and EU approaches to police reform have reflected horizontal and vertical inclusivity.
Author: An Jacobs (Nottingham Trent University) -
This paper will explore the utility of a historical institutionalism as a theoretical perspective for understanding European security dynamics. A variety of theories of international relations have been applied to the analysis of European security since the end of the Cold War, including realism, liberalism, social constructivism, neo-liberal institutionalism and sociological institutionalism. Comparatively, there have been rather few efforts to use historical institutionalism to understand European security. This paper will apply key historical institutionalist insights and concepts to European security, in particular path dependency, critical junctures and punctuated equilibria. The paper will argue that historical institutionalism provides a more convincing explanation of the post-Cold War evolution of European security than realism, and that it provides insights that supplement existing liberal and social constructivist perspectives. In particular, the paper will argue that historical institutionalism: helps us to understand how and why Europe has moved beyond realist assumptions of historical patterns of conflict; highlights the importance of agency and contingency during critical junctures in European security; leads us to expect institutional layering, which has, indeed, been an important feature of post-Cold War European security; and helps to explain the endurance of important sub-optimal characteristics of European security institutions.
Author: Andrew Cottey (University College Cork) -
By using strategic narrative theory we are able to explain some of the reasons why the narratives of young people on how they understand international cooperation differ in the Baltic states to those expressed by similar cohorts in Ukraine. Based on audience reception analysis in the four states, using the Q-sort method of participant narrative construction, our data shows that young Ukrainians narrate the future direction of their country with a strong focus on the self and Ukraine’s internal problems, paying little attention to international system dynamics beyond their borders. In contrast, young Estonians, Lithuanians and (to a lesser extent) Latvians offer narratives about the international system; their perspective is on a different horizon to their Ukrainian peers. This suggests the potential for a declining sense of solidarity between Ukraine and the Baltic states, evident in our comparative data. This has important implications for the post-Soviet region’s politics, culture and society and for the EU. Estonians and Lithuanians narrate an uncertain international system but one in which liberal, cooperative action can improve affairs. We find they place great emphasis on meso-level partnership-building as a form of both self- and collective interest. We conclude by reflecting on how EU public diplomacy efforts in the neighbourhood may involve the EU crafting variations on its strategic narrative to align with the different horizons against which citizens imagine their futures.
Authors: Alister Miskimmon (Queen's University Belfast) , Ben O'Loughlin (Royal Holloway) -
It is widely accepted that energy became increasingly ‘securitised’ in the EU, and a growing body of literature dedicated to examining the impact this has on the kind of energy policies the EU can pursue and its claims to ‘actorness’ (e.g. Natorksi and Herranz-Surralles, 2008; Hofmann and Stager, 2019). However, much of this research is premised on the myth that the 2000s were a key turning point during which securitisation occurred due, largely, to gas supply disruptions in 2006 and 2009. This paper aims to historicise the securitisation of energy in the EU through a discourse analysis of the multitude of ways in which energy and security have been coupled throughout the history of European integration. In doing so it makes three main claims. First, energy did not become securitised in the 2000s but has instead always been regarded as a security concern. What has changed at different points in time are the form that those security concerns have taken, both in terms of their referent objects and their logics. Second, a concern for energy security does not necessarily lead to more or less European integration, but it does shape the particular practices and modalities through which energy use is governed in national and transnational contexts. Third, this legacy of securitisation matters because when energy security concerns have emerged and dissolved at various points in the history of integration, they have served to fix particular ways in which energy security can be understood. This in turn acts as a key discursive resource for subsequent claims about threats to energy security. This paper concludes by highlighting the importance of studying processes of securitisation over longer time periods to capture these dynamics and for problematising the distinction that is often drawn between normal and security politics.
Author: Andrew Judge (University of Glasgow)
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Panel / Refusing Redemption: Failure, Endurance and Persistence Pandon RoomSponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working GroupConvener: Maria-Adriana Deiana (Queen’s University Belfast)Chair: Katarina Kušić (Aberystwyth University)Discussant: Julia Welland (University of Warwick)
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The paper investigates the imaginative economies and scopic fields of popular culture representations of sudden environmental change. These fictions foreground radical exposure to variants of human extinction. As such, then, texts such as Cormack McCarthy's The Road and Jeff van der Meer's Annihilation can be read as stagings of the question of dwelling with an irredeemable vulnerability. However, such fictions are, essentially, a fantasy of the persistence of the anthropocentric subject: a redemption of vulnerable subjects through parables of their individualist survival of what should have been their end. As such, these fictions expose a two-fold political problematic. On the one hand they act as a way to reassert a particularly anthropocentric understanding of the anthropocene: one that is firmly located in the fantasy of surviving and thriving which dates back to organic and evolutionary metaphors deployed to justify colonialism and imperialism. On the other they avoid a key question posed by the concept of vulnerability: how can radical exposure (to extinction in this case) be mitigated if it comprises a condition of possibility of existence. As such, they avoid the question of dwelling with irredeemable exposure. The latter is, of course, a (historical) fact of life for subjugated, colonised, enslaved, and exploited peoples. As such, apocalyptic imaginaries neglect to address the ways in which worlds have already ended and the lessons such endings could have for a theory of vulnerability and thus reassert particularly western, liberal fantasies of anthropocene futures.
Author: Martin Coward (University of Manchester ) -
This paper contests the dominant account of ‘failing better’ currently shaping the organizational structures of global politics. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs producing life-enhancing technology; military strategists pursuing ‘clean’ wars; humanitarian actors managing complex disasters; and activists sounding the alarm on climate change – all are keen to harness the productive energies of past failures in order to produce long-term success. ‘Failing better’ has become a highly efficient form of reflexivity driven by conditions of urgency: the stakes (i.e. securing life; reducing casualties; protecting civilians; ensuring the survival of the species) are simply too high to fail. This paper critiques the linear pedagogy underscoring this framework in order to expose how only particular failures become useful for organizations operating under conditions of urgency. In other words, it is possible to be open and reflexive about specific historical failures so long as they can be arranged into a linear story about failure learning adaptation success. This paper asks what is excluded by this pre-ordained pathway: what life-worlds get eradicated by claims of urgency, what experiences of failure are deemed unproductive, and what forms of violence are reproduced in the name of learning. What happens if we approach failure not as something to be made useful in conditions of urgency (and therefore ultimately eradicated), but rather as a variegated and deeply unruly experience known and felt through its stubborn durability? What happens if we lift failure out of the calculus determined by urgency, and look instead at its persistence, endurance and ongoingness?
Author: Debbie Lisle (Queen's University Belfast ) -
What is at stake when we feel worn down or exhausted by outrage? How might exhaustion potentially lead us to consider other starting points, characters, and scenes in the study of global politics? This paper addresses the politics of heightening nationalism through everyday examples––from ‘digital structures of feeling’ (Kuntsman, 2012) in response to terrorist attacks to the ‘politics of pity’ in response to refugee crises (Squire, 2014)¬¬. Focusing on questions of affect and knowledge, from the politics of fear to anxiety, the paper asks: how do we identify different modes, registers, and tones for thinking and acting politically? Drawing on a case study from the field of performance––specifically, the work of Jo Fong and Sonia Hughes (‘Neither Here Nor There, 2019)––I discuss alternative imaginaries of being together, which re-work the ‘I’ and ‘We’ through a focus on movement, gestures and the politics of listening. I examine how this leads us to another understanding of political change, in a way that refuses both narratives of redemption and the framework of ‘emergency politics’ (Honig, 2011). Overall, the paper outlines fresh ways of addressing the question of nationalism’s persistence, through a discussion of affect, performance and the politics of listening.
Author: Angharad Closs-Stephens (Swansea University ) -
This paper grapples with the complexities of being rendered a target of international peace and security. If focuses on the context of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a key site where European anxieties about security, stability and re-unification meet the elusive promises of liberal peacebuilding. Combining decolonial scholarship and queer IR I show how seemingly progressive practices of international peace and security, necessarily rely on the production of places, such as Bosnia, that cannot but fail to function according to taken for granted norms and imaginaries of conflict resolution. Drawing upon queer insights on failure and impasse (Halberstam, 2011; Berlant 2011) opens a provocative entryway to reveal the violence at stake in ready-made promises of redemption and harness glimpses of a life otherwise in compromised conditions of existence.Mobilising an aesthetic approach, I develop a conceptual reading of local films that unsettle dominant mappings of the region. I illustrate slowness, incoherence and silliness as orientations that undo grandiose narratives of peace and security and show alternative ways of inhabiting world politics.
Author: Maria Adriana Deiana (Queen’s University Belfast)
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Panel / Reprising the Relationship between War and Technology Martin Luther KingSponsor: War Studies Working GroupConvener: Alex Neads (University of Bath)Chair: Alex Neads (University of Bath)Discussant: Brett Edwards (University of Bath)
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The Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) brought forward a focus on how information technologies would change the shape of war through networks, meshes and instant decision-making. While contemporary Western martial thought has moved on from the RMA as unachievable technologically, too expensive, and fundamentally Clausewitzian problematic, Western militaries remain committed to expediency as they did prior to the RMA. This notion of expediency through understanding time as segmented and processing faster per segment is a characteristic of the modern system of battle. However, much of the application of time oriented frameworks from the OODA loop to chaos theory have arisen in air doctrine and moved into maritime and then army doctrine. This paper takes a theoretical look at the way in which time has been understood in relation to the transformation of martial doctrine and seeks to understand how it interacts with the characteristics of land warfare as a unique form of martial behaviour.
Author: David Galbreath (University of Bath) -
This paper examines strategic subcultures and their influence on the development of Offensive Cyber Capabilities (OCC). Drawing on the strategic culture literature, it identifies and critically examines three subcultures that influence how and for what purposes states develop cyber warfare capabilities: the ‘subversive', 'anti-establishment' influence of hackers, the hawks in national security establishments who are often predisposed to weaponising emerging technologies, and the hawkers in the corporate cyber security sector whose aggressive commercialisation of cyber capabilities has contributed to the emergence of modern cyber warfare. The interaction between these three subcultures has played an under-appreciated but oversized role in driving the adoption and proliferation of OCC. Together, they constitute a mutually reinforcing constellation of cultural influences on cyber warfare practices, behaviours and ideas.
Author: Joe Burton (University Libre de Bruxelles) -
The US Department of Defense has made improving ‘soldier lethality’ central to its future equipment, training and doctrine development. At stake is ensuring that US armed forces can defeat 21st century adversaries effectively and with minimum loss of life to American personnel. This may mean acquiring more precise weapons, autonomous systems or equipment that can outperform those used by an enemy force. Equally, it implies that American personnel must make use of technologies that improve survivability and neutralise enemy lethality so as to render them militarily ineffective. The centrality of this debate in US military circles has led to Britain’s armed forces showing an interest in lethality. In the British case, the Army seeks to use unmanned and autonomous systems as a way to make up for the declining number of recruits. This paper questions what lethality tells us about contemporary approaches to the conduct of war by examining the factors that frame and legitimise the development of certain technologies. What is meant by the word lethality? How do bureaucratic, doctrinal and technological interpretations of this term differ and how does the idea play out in legal, medical, moral and scientific terms. By reflecting on the contested and multidimensional ways in which lethality is understood, this paper considers the way martial values and democratic choices find themselves inscribed into the technologies and conduct of war.
Author: Matthew Ford (University of Sussex) -
It is no longer sufficient to talk about drones and drone warfare in simple and homogeneous terms. We have entered a new epoch, where a myriad of drone systems—some rudimentary, others complex, some used for good, others for bad—have been deployed in novel and deadly ways. By bringing together insight from the field of International Law and War Studies, this interdisciplinary paper will identify some of the most troublesome legal, and strategic concerns that arise out of this new proliferated drone landscape and provide important recommendations on how to remedy them.
Authors: James Rogers (SDU) , Amelie Theussen (University of Southern Denmark) -
Warfare and technology have a closely intertwined history. Indeed, it is commonly acknowledged that military technological innovations in times of conflict have a lasting impact on civilian life. Moreover, technology also plays a key role in strategic innovation during conflict insofar as the development of new means and methods of flighting brings a need for new strategies. However, when looking at the relationship between technology and strategic innovation, there is a risk of “putting the technology cart before the strategy horse” (Czarnekci 2014). This is especially true with the popular belief that technology will determine how future wars will be fought and won. Although the importance of technology cannot be ignored, it also mustn’t be overstated. Thus, this paper will argue that the focus on technology overshadows other key considerations having an impact on the need for strategic innovation such as the importance of the enemy’s identity and target identification in contemporary warfare. Considering this, it will be argued that emerging military technologies require complimentary strategic, doctrinal, and organizational change as opposed to solely being a driver of strategic innovation.
Author: Andree-Anne (Andy) Melancon (Royal Military Academy Sandhurst)
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Panel / Shaping IR according to our values: a disciplinary asymetrical fantasy? Bewick RoomSponsor: International Relations as a Social Science Working GroupConvener: IRSS Working groupChair: Alexander Hoseason (Aston University)
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) has long been on the IR agenda (Hudson 1991, Din 1988). However, the rapid advances in AI technologies and explosion of literature also provides a watershed moment to re-assess the theory, practice and teaching of International Relations. This paper argues that in studying the AI revolution, the IR literature has certainly reflected its prior assumptions on competition and conflict such as the technology-security nexus and “innovation imperative” in power transition (Kennedy and Lim 2018); implications for warfare (Johnson 2019); arms races (Haner and Garcia 2019) to new “AI hegemons” (Gill 2019). Drawing on its participation in a multi-disciplinary project on governing complex emerging technologies such as AI, this paper contends that the future possibilities of IR lie in embracing cognate disciplines like sociology and risk studies, and the nexus between science, technology and public policy. It proposes two key aspects. Firstly, the notion of “emancipatory catastrophism” devised by sociologist Ulrich Beck (2015) provides a means to develop new normative horizons in IR based on shared concerns over AI as an “existential risk” (Cambridge Centre for Study of Existential Risks). Through field work interviews, document analysis and empirical data collection, it identifies how social movements, popular culture, academia, AI firms, individuals such as Elon Musk, and the media play key roles framing the AI risks globally. Secondly, studying the nexus between science, technology and public policy allows researchers to examine “technology governance” (Shiroyama 2013) and the multiple stakeholders involved in how governments are incorporating AI into their foreign and security policies. Case studies of the United Kingdom and Singapore are discussed. Taken together, these aspects have implications for different ways of teaching IR and more diverse inclusive forms of knowledge being generated by researchers that supplement the mainstream theoretical traditions.
Author: Yee-Kuang Heng (University of Tokyo) -
There have been increasing calls in the discipline of International Relations (IR) for a more sustained and empathetic dialogue between the disciplinary core and the periphery to reach a veritable ‘global’ IR that is representative of the pluralities which are equally constitutive of the world affairs. We contend that there is a functionally differentiated hierarchy composed of four layers occupied by distinct agencies whose epistemic interactions with each other have peculiar characteristics that are shaped by and sustain the existing hierarchy. At the top of the hierarchy is the core of core composed of North American research universities with high research output. The second layer is the periphery of the core, composed of Western universities and journals that have substantive research output, but their interaction patterns are marked by a tendency to extend the research programmes of the core of the core. The third layer is the core of the periphery, composed of universities and journals with limited number of quality research and serves as a link for theory borrowing from the core. The fourth layer is the periphery of the periphery. These are academic institutions that ‘consume’ the research done in other layers and have substantive difficulties in engaging in meaningful interaction with other layers. These knowledge flows are an essential component in the emergence and perpetuation of epistemic hierarchies in the global IR. Furthermore, epistemic hierarchies constitute the setting with what we call ‘differential epistemic gravities’ wherein disciplinary dialogues, current and prospective, assume asymmetrical patterns. This study aims to discuss epistemic gravities in the hierarchical structure of the discipline with reference to the positionality of Turkish IR academia within the ‘global’ IR. The positionality of Turkish IR academia is analysed along two metrics. The first is the location of academic institutions from which IR scholars in Turkey have received their PhDs. The second is the countries of origins of scholars who have received their PhDs from Turkish academic institutions.
Authors: Eyup Ersoy (Ahi Evran University) , Gonca Biltekin (Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research)* -
Bemoaning the policy-academia gap and the lack of policy relevance are ritual traditions in International Relations (IR). These discourses feature liturgies of supplication and repentance and incantations intended to steer scholars away from ‘academic’ concerns and toward greater worldly impact. If only IR researchers would try harder, write clearer, and avoid complex methodological and theoretical concerns, so this cult of policy reverence asserts, the field would become relevant to the subjects it studies and gain a foothold in the corridors of power. This paper scrutinizes several operative notions propping up the cult of policy reverence and makes the case for a more (rather than less) detached, even irreverent, IR. First, we unpack three assumptions of policy reverence: 1) that the principal purpose of social science is to provide traction on pressing problems by influencing policy; 2) the good scholarship helps rather than harms its objects of analysis; and 3) policy reverence inspires better research. We then show how policy reverent arguments unfold through a series of false choices between methods or relevance, narrow or wider academic-policy gaps, and esoteric or useful knowledge. These discussions expose an overriding and often disastrous liberal-idealism in relevance discourses based on a particular and spurious view of the nature, role, and value of IR in international politics. By contrast, if IR has a vocational duty to the world it studies, as almost all scholars aver, this may entail turning away from policy relevance as a pre-determined goal. We conclude by reframing IR as an intentionally a irreverent discipline, one that never sacrifices reflexivity on the altar of influence and that strategically adopts an ironic-critical position on current affairs – both for our own professional sake and for the sake of global politics.
Authors: Andy Hom (University of Edinburgh) , Brent J. Steele (University of Utah) -
Research communities in IR have grown increasingly narrow, specialized, and hostile, if not oblivious to one another. This trend has been noted by a variety of scholars. Steve Smith complained how differing positions in the so-called great debates “have simply ignored each other.” Meg Hermann noted how the field resembles a “Tower of Babel, filled with a cacophony of different voices…sniping at those who come too close…” This move toward rigid polarities and rivalries in IR, while widely noted, is rarely explained. This paper explores several explanations for the increased specialization in IR. First, we chart the proliferation of specialized journals. Second, we examine the role of technology in narrowing the search process when identifying relevant research questions. Third, we explore an ethos of Kuhnian normal science originating during the behavioural revolution that justifies the narrow research quest. Finally, we argue that the peculiar level of hostility between IR sects is intensified, albeit subconsciously, by what we study: research communities resemble nations with a common ancestry seeking sovereign control of their turf while defending against the rise of a theoretical hegemon. In the end, these forces combine to impoverish enquiry and broad understandings of global politics.
Author: Thomas Walker (GVSU) -
The field of international relations theory has long been dominated by utopian thinking. Whether it is realism, liberalism, idealism, Marxism or any of their hybrid derivations, each assumes a universal morality, and attempts to explain or interpret the world according to its perspective. Subsequently, such interpretation involves intervention either in a real or discursive form, often aiming to reconcile paradoxes such as democracy or neoliberal governance within the capacities of spaces that do not necessarily conform to its criteria; a practice which leads to hegemony and often imposes homogenization. Whereas this can be considered as the search for a utopia, literally a “no-place” that cannot be built, I propose that IR theory should allow heterotopias, defined by Foucault as sites of difference and otherness, to burgeon on their own by radically de-territorializing its knowledge. Following Foucault’s principles of hetertopology, I propose that: 1) heterotopian IR theory is not only concerned with “non-Western” alternatives, as all intellectual communities are able to produce their own spaces of otherness; 2) such spaces are not bound to serve pre-defined disciplinary functions, but are appropriated according to the needs of their communities; 3) they do not have to exclude or oppose competing sites of knowledge and discourse, but can be juxtaposed in the same reality; 4) they embrace their own historicity and re-appropriate it 5) their boundaries are essentially permeable and do not have to be “protected” by disciplinary sanctions; 6) they have the capacity to interact with, and enrich the outside world. Unlike decoloniality which tends to assume the position of reactivity against the intellectual legacy of Western colonialism and therefore risks perpetuating the division, heterotopian thinking accepts the idea that the Western intellect itself suffers from self-oppression and closure, and would therefore benefit from the creative potential of otherness.
Author: Ahlem Faraoun (University of Sussex)
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Panel / Stability and power in interventions CarilolSponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working GroupConvener: Peacekeeping and peacebuilding Working group (BISA)Chair: david curran (Coventry University)
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Over the last two decades, dominant critiques of UN peace operations have emphasized their role in forcefully disseminating a liberal democratic peace into post-conflict states. While peace operations in the 1990s and early 2000s prioritized the creation of democratic states through strong election support mandates, the 2010s have been dominated by a new form of UN intervention: stabilization missions designed to create strong security states capable of managing insurgencies and repelling international threats. This paper aims to challenge the assumed stability of the UN’s liberal international peace and security project during the era of stabilization. It does so by operationalizing post-structuralist discourse theory to analyse the articulatory practices of actors involved in stabilization mission discourses around national elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, and the Central African Republic between 2016 and 2019. Drawing on interviews with Security Council members and mission officials, this paper argues that a liberal peace predicated on the consolidation of democracy is no longer viewed as essential by UN actors. Instead, these actors have turned to more pragmatic aims, particularly strengthening state authority and security capacity as the most effective means of maintaining international peace and security in stabilization contexts.
Author: Jennifer Russi -
Is it possible to discern the extent to which the philanthropic work of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) such as Oxfam, CAFOD, Saferworld, or Save the Children is intermingled with additional, potentially partisan interests? Large INGOs working in crisis areas present themselves as manifestations of a truly cosmopolitan international society. Critics, by contrast, hold that such organizations are primarily, if not exclusively, a conduit for advancing the interests of their ‘Western’ donors. The discussion has gained added urgency due to the rise of illiberal politics and the increased push back against INGO interference.
The paper theorizes the contribution of informal interpersonal networks to shaping the policies and programmes of INGOs in the international governance of crisis areas. It presents the first systematic account for measuring their effects on INGO practices. The paper conceptualizes social networks simultaneously as dynamic structures and social processes to assess the informal and interpersonal interfaces between the UK governmental and INGO-spheres at three levels: staff, board members, and management/elite networks. Based on a mixed-methods social network analysis, the paper presents a new analytical model for assessing the proximity and characteristics of INGO-governmental interfaces. It also draws on qualitative case studies to discuss the implications of this analysis for the wider debate surrounding INGO legitimacy and the role of interpersonal networks in international politics.Author: Andrea Warnecke (Aberystwyth University) -
This project originated with the observation that domestic and international actors engaged in Security Sector Reform in the Global South tend to follow a normative agenda that is oriented towards an ideal type of Weberian state. Those models of SSR often fail to see the reality that is evident in many states in the Global South: state institutions are only one of a myriad of actors that provide services such as security or law and order to its citizens. Non-state actors such as traditional authorities are rarely included in institutional reform programmes – notwithstanding that they might provide a more effective complement to service provisions particularly for people in local communities. Hence, despite the apparent noble aims of the normative agenda, institutional reform in the Global South has had varied results in practice. The project challenges persistent perceptions of state-building and institutional reform in the Global South. It aims to propose and test a novel approach to deal with persistent challenges in post-colonial countries, such as inefficiency and lack of trust of state institutions as well as pervasive corruption. It does so by analysing different ways of how the formal and informal realm can be integrated in four different countries across four different regions. By giving a voice to those communities most affected by violence and fragility, the project thus contributes to a decolonisation of SSR and a re-centring reform towards the Global South.
Author: Nadine Ansorg (University of Kent) -
Why, when and how members of active paramilitary groups disengage? Existing studies on disengagement from paramilitary organisations have focused on demobilised paramilitary groups, which were disbanded following a peace agreement or the end of armed conflict. Less is known about how disengagement works in active paramilitary organisations continuously engaged in ongoing armed conflict. The key theoretical claim of this study is that in active paramilitary organisations group transformation (either ideological or organisational) is far more conducive to individual decisions to disengage than external opportunities, such as employment prospects or reintegration to peaceful life. This study draws its empirical insights from in-depth qualitative interviews with former members of Ukraine’s pro-government paramilitary battalions who disengaged from their groups in 2015. The findings demonstrate that massive ideological and organisational transformation within Ukraine’s paramilitary battalions has pushed thousands of their members to disengage regardless of existing opportunities. These findings have broader implication for further research and practice on disengagement from armed groups with valuable insights for both policy-makers and practitioners.
Author: Huseyn Aliyev (University of Glasgow) -
UN missions that pursue ‘stabilization’ have led to a number of new trends ranging from the ‘robust’ use of force, closer cooperation with the host state, engagement with counter-terrorism and lastly a focus on rebuilding the rule of law. The mandates of MINUSMA and MINUSCA make specific mention of supporting the rule of law and the missions themselves have carried out numerous activities to end impunity and restablish the rule of law. This is important in the context of stabilization since the missions have a closer relationship with the host state and express strategies (and mandates) to ‘extend state authority’. Entrenching the rule of law is one core method of by which the UN seeks to extend state authority. By reopening prisons, rebuilding courts and providing a secure environment for magistrates to return, the UN facilitates the reestablishment of state authority. This paper first discusses the notion of stabilization and what it involves. Second, the UN’s understanding of the rule of law is briefly explored. Thirdly, the various avenues by which MINSUMA and MINUSCA have sought to rebuild the rule of law are discussed including the Special Criminal Court in the CAR. Lastly, the consequences of this shift toward a rule of law focus is assessed. The argument is made that while ending impunity can be important to ensure human rights violations do not persist, there needs to be an overarching, bottom-up strategy in place to allow communities to be part of the rule of law process.
Author: Alexander Gilder (Royal Holloway, University of London)
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Panel / Technology in IR Sandhill RoomSponsor: Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working GroupConvener: CRIPT Working groupChair: Christof Royer (University of St Andrews )
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This paper examines the history of the concept of silence in international political theory while also re-examining international political theory via ‘silence’. It first traces the emergence of silence as a political concept in the 18th century through the eventual equation of silence with political and epistemic domination in the 20th century. It then shows how silence, actual and metaphorical, became a concern for international political theory increasingly following the slow decline of the Westphalian political imaginary. Indeed, the paper contends that excising ‘silence’ is a primary concern of both contemporary problem solving (ie. liberal) and critical normative international political theories. After establishing the centrality and ubiquity of silence for international political theory, the paper’s indicates how we can retell the story of disciplinary divisions between idealism and realism and scepticism through the prism of silence.
Author: Sophia Dingli (University of Glasgow) -
This paper focuses on the relation between technology and international politics. It specifically analyses artificial intelligence (AI) critically and examines how it continues to dominate society as well as every aspect of a human life. The much-hyped fourth generation industrial revolution is branded as a disruptive technology one that is fully poised to change the interaction between man and machine in more ways than one. AI has made remarkable development. Machines haves taken the form of human beings as they think, argue and solve problems like humans do. Furthermore, it has changed the interaction between market and politics to the extent of affecting international trade and investment. In the domain of international relations, the methods of diplomacy and conflict have been changed as well. However, it has augmented the concerns of national security in past few year as China has achieved a lot of success in it, thereby posing a threat and potentially causing insecurity to powerful countries like America in particular and to the whole world in general.
The paper seeks to engage with these challenges along with focussing on some of the thinkers of critical theoretical tradition like Benjamin, Foucault and Derrida. These people were also fighting against similar technology and the domination established by some countries. The only difference is that this technology and its methods of establishing domination have changed.
Author: Raju Verma -
: In 2015 and 2016, Islamic State militants targeted multiple ancient cultural heritage sites in Syria and Iraq. While the destruction of ancient art and artefacts have been tracked by governmental and non-governmental organizations, the extent of damage remains unknown. In this presentation, I interrogate the politics of iconoclasm and restoration as it relates to a digitally restored Lamassu Bull from Nineveh, Mosul. The politics of restoration poses two problems, neither mutually exclusive. The first problem pertains to meaning. IS militants and heritage preservationists share an assumption that ancient artefacts, such as the Lamassu Bull, are endowed with a degree of sacredness (e.g., as idolatry) or authenticity (as an archaeological entity), which forms the material basis for the object’s meaning. The destructive gesture only resonates if the artefact is endowed with meaning. Moreover, the destroyed object allows preservationists and international organizations to claim heritage destruction as an attack on ‘common humanity.’ I critically examine this shared terrain of ‘authenticity’ between heritage preservationists and IS militants. The second problem pertains to the issue of digitally restoring cultural artefacts. Here, I examine Bruno Latour's concept of 'iconoclash' to interrogate the recent folding of 'things' back into the political (e.g., Arendt, Connolly, Bennett, Honig, etc.). While Latour abandons any notion of 'authenticity,' his work still authorises a conservative understanding of 'worlding' insofar as the destruction of 'things' is taken as peculiar form of violence. I ask whether the digital restoration of cultural artefacts is its own mode of violence, one that erases the fragments of destruction.
Author: Belcher Oliver (Durham University) -
Private technology actors have become powerful players on the international stage. Yet IR literature often ultimately roots this evolution in economic factors and motives, overlooking some of the ways software distinctively constitutes power and embodies politics. A key such dynamic in cyberspace is the so-called ‘disruptive innovation’: an arrangement of software code, if accepted by an audience of users, may break the existing rules of the cyber game while posing an existential threat to actors who depend on the earlier order. This paper proposes to frame this dynamic as a ‘design act’, a software equivalent to securitisation. Mobilising the ‘code is law’ concept by legal scholar Lawrence Lessig, I take the Copenhagen School as a starting point for theorising technological design, through speech act theory combined with a Derridean perspective on language. Discourse analysis is then used to explore the 2016 struggle between Apple Inc. and U.S. law enforcement over the encrypted San Bernardino iPhone. By examining how securitising speech and software design leverage their mutual similarities to constitute threats, I strive to show how technology actors have to think in a security logic, opening a way to conceptualise cyberspace as fundamentally an arena for international politics.
Author: Vic Castro (Inalco (French National Institute for Eastern Languages and Civilisations)) -
The Anthropocene studies hail the new epoch as an opportunity to end modernity’s Cartesian dualism (Man vs. Nature) in order to revolutionize the human relationship with the non-human (e.g. create naturecultures). Propelled by the instabilities of the changing climate, thinkers studying object-oriented ontologies and process philosophy advocate for thinking relationally about politics as imbricated with the Earth system (the Gaia hypothesis). Accordingly, the Anthropocene represents an opportunity to investigate new ways of becoming, not being, with the world that is constantly changing.
The tools offered by the Anthropocene are examined in this research to offer a critical outlook on the imbrication of neo-liberal instabilities and the increasing role of techno-materialities in world politics. I engage with Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of nature and technology in order to tease out problems with the Anthropocene debate and then apply them to the study of drone violence. In that sense, this research tries to investigate how techno-materialities (drones), as relationalities that exert power, reconstitute the idea of the human in the age of the Anthropocene. Consequently, this research imparts a critique of drone violence from the standpoint of Arendtian intervention into the Anthropocene.
This research asks how we can use the knowledges produced by the Anthropocene to strengthen the critique in International Politics? It tries to answer this question by looking into how we can understand the human life as a process in the Anthropocene by engaging with instances where humans are turned into natural processes in operational spaces of drone violence?Author: Toni Cerkez (Aberystwyth University)
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Roundtable / The politics of comparison and relationality: colonial grammars, knowledge production & counter-politics - Part II Stephenson Room
This BISA roundtable is Part two of two that seek to extend a number of rolling conversations among IR scholars concerning the relations but also tensions within and between logics and forms of coloniality as well as the conditions under which anti-colonial activism and solidarity can take root. Inspired by the work of Stoler and McGranahan (2007), Lowe (2015) and Puar (2007), we seek to both examine how colonial linkages are shaped in and through (intimate) circuits of practice as well as how comparative/relational analytics can perform and produce additional modes of colonial governance, fractures and erasure. We will further these discussions through posing questions that consider the politics of comparison and relationality as inherently historical matters that can never be politically disinvested; and thus can contribute to but also efface the possibility of anti-colonial solidarities and movements. Taking this as guiding premise, the participants of this second panel will focus more explicitly on how dissenting to, revealing, practicing and/or producing new forms of relationality operate in modes of anti-colonial contestation, politics and critique. We will look at these themes from a variety of lenses, including indigenous epistemologies, anti-imperial and anti-colonial movements, academic knowledge production and the physical infrastructure that produces settler space. Again, the emphasis here is on contributing to new paradigms and practices for challenging colonial relations in the present.
Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working GroupChair: Rhys Machold (University of Glasgow)Participants: Elian Weizman (London South Bank University) , Ananya Sharma (ASHOKA UNIVERSITY) , Kelly-Jo Bluen (London School of Economics) , Sharri Plonski (Queen Mary University of London) , Christopher Murray (London School of Economics and Political Science) , Katharine Hall (Queen Mary University of London) -
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Panel / Visuality and Emotions in International Politics Swan RoomSponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working GroupConveners: Amya Agarwal (Centre for Global Cooperation Research, Duisburg) , Christine Unrau (Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen)Chair: Henri Myrttinen (Mosaic Beirut)Discussant: Chiara de Franco (Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark)
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The paper explores the use of graffiti, slogans, engravings on the hills and poetry on the graves to understand firstly, how emotions like pride, sacrifice, grief and pain are manipulated – both by the state and non-state actors in a conflict situation. The politics of emotions not only helps in mobilizing people, but also serves as a significant medium through which certain ideas are circulated, reproduced and in turn become norms of behaviour. Second, and more importantly, the paper attempts to unfold the gendered nature of these emotions projected through the visual representations. How the grieving mother image in Kashmir, for instance, becomes an important symbol of resistance or a slogan on the army camp such as ‘Get them by their balls, their hearts and minds will follow’ arouses aggression and helps in justifying revenge politics. Such imageries and visuals also reinforce gender constructs and identities in a conflict. For successfully sustaining conflicts, the gender division of the so called feminine and masculine emotions is carefully carried out. The paper, thus attempts to unfold the nuances and complexities involved in the study of emotions, gender and their visual representations in conflict and resistance movements.
Author: Amya Agarwal (Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen) -
Most recently, several younger women such as Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand and Sanna Marin in Finland were elected as heads of government, which was widely praised as progress towards equality. This, evidently, is the case only to some extent. Women have held the highest offices in various countries over some decades, and yet each of them has faced particular challenges due to their gender. One of the implicit expectations concerns their assumed and highly gendered emotionality, which can be both an asset and ground for ridicule or contempt. Thus, female leaders have tried to tone down their show of emotions or employ it strategically. Yet, how, apart from speeches and other public appearances, can female leaders perform an emotionality that serves to underline but not undermine their position of power?
Fashion, as personal style, costume, etc., has been an important symbolic instrument for performing power, and also emotion. For instance, the newly elected female members Congress belonging to the Democratic Part all wore white tops to show their gratitude to the suffragette movement that paved the way. In the paper, I will explore the presentation of fashion in several cases of female leaders with regard to attempts to perform certain kinds of emotion. In the context of gender debates, affective registers of politics and cultural repertoires, each case may address a broader context of politics and emotion.Author: Katja Freistein (Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen ) -
Pathogens are invisible for the human eye - disease only becomes visible through the marks it leaves on the human body. The emotions evoked by images in the context of health are highly complex and may include compassion and pity as well as disgust and fear. The proposed paper seeks to make sense of this complexity and their impact on the health-security nexus. To do so, it uses the West African Ebola epidemic 2014/2015 as a case study. It identifies two visual themes: the protected body (i.e. health workers in protective clothing) and the body in pain (i.e. images of persons showing signs of infection) and discusses the complex emotions tied to them: on the one hand, due to the evocation of colonial stereotypes, the images create distance between the photographed person and the viewer, on the other hand, the fear of contagion makes the distant other seem pretty close. In analyzing this ambiguity, the paper explores the interplay of emotions and images in the context of health crises. It makes the case for taking the role of emotions seriously, both in the field of visual IR and in studies on the health-security nexus.
Author: Katharina Krause (Institut for Political Science, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen) -
The proposed paper looks at how emotions are not only aroused, but also shaped, crafted and manipulated in the context of migration. While protagonists of the far-right engage in fear-mongering and the incitement of indignation against a corrupt elite, pro-asylum activists often focus their activities on empathy and compassion for refugees. These attempts, however, are often the object of critique not only from political adversaries, but often also by those who share the overall goal of refugee protection. Such criticism includes the reproach of sadism, hypocrisy, instrumentalization and paternalism and regards the complicated communicative structure of interventions which picture the situation of refugees. Against this background, the paper first reconstructs the arguments which have been put forward in favor of as well as against sentimental education (Richard Rorty). In a second step, it examines the various modes of sentimental intervention by focusing on three very different documentary films which deal with migration and refuge: Wim Wenders’ “The Flight”, Gianfranco Rosi’s “Fire at sea” and the BBC’S “Exodus: Our Journey to Europe”, a participatory project which assembles footage shot by refugees. Which narrative techniques and aesthetic strategies are employed to temporarily widen the circle of the “we” and (how) do the three films manage to avoid the pathologies and pitfalls of sentimental education?
Author: Christine Unrau (Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen)
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Coffee and Tea Break 30m
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Panel / (Re)Production of Gendered Violence and Resistance Collingwood RoomSponsor: Gendering International Relations Working GroupConvener: Ali Bilgic (Loughborough University)Chair: Annick Wibben (Swedish Defence University)
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While much is now known about the multiple forms of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) to which people are subjected in (post-)conflict spaces, there remains a relative lack of understanding about how the interconnections between such forms of violence are understood by those who experience them, as well as about how these perceived interconnections are enmeshed in gendered social power relations. In this paper, we draw on group and individual interviews carried out with male and female refugees living in Kampala, Uganda, to scrutinise the complex, and deeply gendered, interweavings between SGBV and the destruction/(re)construction of the gendered social fabric in (post-)conflict spaces. Participants in this study repeatedly draw causal connections between sexual violence perpetrated by armed men against ‘enemy’ women and men and subsequent domestic violence. Our discussion of the logics that underpin these perceived causal connections enables a close analysis of the shifting and contingent ways in which various forms of SGBV are understood to be imbricated in one another and implicated in shifting gender norms. This enables us to unpack further than has previously been done the complexities through which SGBV can be understood to destroy, maintain, and reproduce gendered power relations in (post)war contexts.
Authors: Harriet Gray (University of York) , Chris Dolan (Refugee Law Project, Makarere University)* -
From concerns about terrorist radicalisation to the Twitter activity of the Trump presidency, the political implications of social media are ever clearer. The paper sets out to explore the reach and importance of militaristic content on social media, considering how pro-war and anti-war content on social media is engaged with by social media users in highly gendered ways. Such content comes in many forms from militarised pop videos, military videogame trailers, recruitment campaigns by the army to promos for fighter jets and has been engaged with literally billions of times by the public.
YouTube comments provide rich data given that social interaction is widespread and often highly nuanced. As da Silva and Crilley (2017: 166) argue, they can ‘provide illuminating insights into everyday narratives of global politics’. They are often ‘less contrived’, more reflective of the people’s real opinions, than those given in interviews (for example) (ibid). Given this, it is surprising that they are so seldom used by researchers in the social sciences (for exceptions see Dodds, 2012; Croft, 2012; Crilley, 2016). The paper addresses this lacuna through an exploration of the engagement with what might appear everyday banal militaristic content by YouTube users. It makes two key points. First, in terms of methods, that YouTube comments provide a rich source of potential material for researchers. Second, in terms of findings, that YouTube users demonstrate a surprisingly diverse range of articulated emotional responses to militaristic content such as deference, loss, suffering, nationalism, romanticisation and hostility.
Authors: Nick Robinson (University of Leeds) , Henna Tammi (University of Leeds) -
Gender equality has now become embedded in neoliberal in the context of right to intervention. While the norms of gender mainstreaming have been widely articulated conceptually and diffused as policy tools in peace building, the context of strategies and mandates are tested on grounds of historically violent societies and its inimical relations with the state.
The gender-focused aid intervention in Afghanistan provides a case study of gender mainstreaming in post conflict reconstruction specifically by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which has the largest programs in the country.
This paper seeks to examine the way in which the diffusion norms on gender equality has been articulated Peace building particularly in Afghanistan. By outlining the context and the structure, it will attempt to articulate feminist vision into governance projects. Focusing on norms diffusion, and policymaking process and delivery, the paper intends to analyze all that within the ambit of gender mainstreaming in Reconstruction.Author: Niamkoi Lam Niamkoi (Jawaharlal Nehru University) -
Women have been marginalized from the traditional understanding politics for a long time, and war is a major component of understanding world politics, women have not found enough channels to be represented in War memorials, through times immemorial, for all the contributions they have made over the years. "Where are the women?" as Cynthia Enloe talks in her seminal work, find relevance in the field of representation. Understanding women and their crucial contributions in the history of war become imperative to shatter the glass ceiling which decided to put limitations in analyzing their crucial contributions in the field. War memorials paint a selective picture which itself is problematic, as it selects a narrative at the cost of others, in this case, the women do not find a voice in the representation. As we speak, there are numerous war memorials which tend to oblige a narrative of the victors at the cost of the marginalized, especially in the Global South. A hard-earned struggle for independence in Global South is a well-known phenomenon, but are we still in the clutches of Imperial ideology which doesn't consider the voices of women?
As we reimagine world politics, we need to understand the fault lines where a selective understanding of memory has hampered the due contributions which the women have made in the field. In this project, we would examine War Memorials and the politics of representation, through a Feminist lens and understand how the women have been marginalized in the traditional study of war, through their representation in War memorials, especially in Global South
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Over the last few decades, narratives on women’s experiences have been making steady ground. It has been increasingly recognized that the act of telling and narrating also has a gender aspect to it. These works have firmly established that there are other ways of remembering that would not necessarily support the official recollections of the past which have historically not accommodated this way of seeing. The structural and institutional role of testimonials provided by women adds a necessary dimension to our understanding of lived experiences of conflict situations. Since the memory boom after mid-1980s, the concept of memory has been widely studied and diversely classified by different theorists. Such has been this boom in recent scholarship that some critics have predicted its end.
The paper is an attempt to determined women’s perspective in looking principles narratives of history during civil war in Spain. The paper firstly deals with the historical dominance of male narrative of describing history and civil war throughout 20th century. Secondly it analysis how the role of women in these narratives been which was ignored took attention in literature. Thirdly the paper deals with the challenges that have been faced while bringing out the women’s perspective in narration of history in the late 20th century. Fourthly, two novels from two regions in Spain and India have been taken up for scrutiny. Lastly the paper takes case study of Carmen Laforet and Attiya Hossain in order to give a comparative outcome of the study.Author: Chandni Kumari (Jawaharlal Nehru Univesrity)
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Roundtable / Art and Activism: Seeing, making, doing politics through art in peace and conflict Daniel Wood
There is an increasing interest in aesthetics in international politics, with new research taking seriously the political affects and effects of different ways of ‘seeing politics’ (Harman, 2019). This roundtable is interested in these developments, but also in turning our attention to art as a political practice and exploring how politics is done in art, as well as how it is seen. In particular, the roundtable considers the role of art in conflict and post-conflict spaces, and the potential of such work as activism. As Danko notes, there is a tendency of studies of artistic activism to either focus on the art or the politics, rather than considering them as inseperable and intertwined. The roundtable considers applying “art suspicion”… to reflect upon both Artivism as artistic practice and Artivism as political practice’ (Danko, 2018: 238). This roundtable will explore artistic activist practices in conflict and post conflict and pose a number of questions. What is the role of artists as witnesses of atrocity? How does artistic engagement produce different kinds of politics? How do different forms of activist art by those who have experienced conflict shape politics? What are the tensions between activist, practitioner and donor claims about the value of artistic process? How does the political intent of art shape the form and reception of it? Does artistic activism necessarily broaden political participation, or can it be another form of exclusion? Has the value of an artistic approach been weakened through the integration of the arts in mainstream peacebuilding programmes?
Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working GroupChair: Róisín Read (University of Manchester)Participants: Christine Andrä (Aberystwyth University) , Lydia Cole (University of Durham) , Bathsheba Okwenje (Artists and fellow at FLCA, LSE. ) , Henry Redwood (Department of War Studies, King's College London) -
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Panel / BISA Professional Development Session I History RoomSponsor: BISAConvener: Kyle Grayson (BISA)Chair: Kyle Grayson (BISA)
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Roundtable / Becoming Fugitives - Collaborating towards anti-colonial/decolonial praxis in academic spaces Dobson Room
For colleagues invested in anti-colonial/decolonial movements – and to their disordering and disruption of coloniality, as global and transversal processes – there is a constant, unsettling set of questions that emerge, given the constrictive arena in which we produce our scholarship: How do we produce an ethics of practice that is politically invested in solidarity and allyship; that contributes to rather than extracts from movements and struggles; that challenges attempts to discipline who, what, where and how we teach and share our work? In other words, how do we produce scholarship that operates as and with anti-colonial/decolonial praxis?
This roundtable attempts to contribute both conceptually and methodologically to these questions. On one hand, participants already engage these questions in their own work in International Studies: in the way they examine race and gender as imbricated in colonial relations, rethink policing and carcerality as foundational to global capitalist-colonial systems, work to reveal colonial relations in materials and materiality, and envision decolonial methods and practices in quotidian spaces and lives. On the other, this roundtable asks participants to read and reflect on the work of the other members, and thus present on how the challenges and political projects inherent to their colleagues’ work - in terms of methodologies, topics, and approaches - changes and helps to better develop their own. In this way, the roundtable sets out to expand the connections between different analyses of colonial and anti-colonial circuits, and at the same time disrupt the modes of accumulation and extraction that are central to academic knowledge production, and which we are consistently encouraged to pursue. Our aim is to contribute new thinking about collaboration and collective production that is both rigorous and generative; encouraging ally-ship, solidarity, support and political accountability to one another, and to the communities with which we work on the ground.
Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working GroupChair: Olivia Rutazibwa (University of Portsmouth )Participants: Chris Rossdale (University of Bristol) , Sabrien Amrov (University of Toronto) , Lisa Tilley (Birkbeck University of London) , Sharri Plonski (Queen Mary University of London) , Nivi Manchanda (Queen Mary University of London) -
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Panel / Chinese Hard and Soft Power in the 21st Century Martin Luther KingSponsor: Foreign Policy Working GroupConvener: Kyle Grayson (BISA)Chair: Kyle Grayson (BISA)
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The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is a Eur/asian political, security and economic regional governmental grouping. It can be considered the most important security-oriented organization of states that the People’s Republic of China has played an instrumental role in helping to create and develop. Aside from its current regular membership of eight countries, it also includes four observer states and six dialogue partners, governed by a structural framework that is managed by a secretariat located in Beijing. The major achievements of the SCO are in the areas of anti-terrorism, trade and investment expansion, cultural and educational exchanges, external cooperation, and membership enlargement. The major challenges to the SCO are in the spheres of institutional deepening, maintenance of political values and organizational priorities, India’s membership, the group’s relations with Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, and potential China-Russia rivalry. Two questions are pertinent regarding China’s role in the SCO and Asian regionalism: (I) To what extent does China still need the SCO, considering its extensive and increasing ties with individual SCO countries, and (II) Is China content to keep its involvement within its own region, given its internationalization strategies such as the Belt-and-Road Initiative.
Author: Chien-peng (C.P.) Chung (Lingnan University, Hong Kong) -
China’s burgeoning economic and security activities abroad have given rise to suspicions and criticisms of its intentions, particularly among neighbouring countries. As Buddhism is a shared faith and heritage among many Chinese and hundreds of millions of people across Asia, winning over the trust and friendship of Buddhist countries has emerged as an important Chinese diplomatic initiative, especially under the current Xi Jinping leadership, amidst Beijing’s revival of the ancient Silk Road.
Having over 245 million Buddhists, 28,000 Buddhist monasteries, 16,000 temples and 240,000 Buddhist monks and nuns makes the promotion of Buddhism a rich source of attractive socio-cultural soft-power, or “soul power,” for China. China’s claim to leadership of the Buddhist world is generated from its heavy investments in building Buddhist institutions and engaging Buddhist groups in Buddhist countries. As Buddhism is very much an integral part of national identities of Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, a proud legacy in India, and a major religion in Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan, it should not be overlooked for the conduct of Chinese diplomacy.
The paper analyses what the objectives of China’s Buddhist diplomacy are, which personnel, organizations or state bureaus in China make China’s Buddhist diplomacy, how is it carried out, what the targeted institutions and personnel in the affected countries are, and what the reactions from the targeted countries are.
Author: Chien-peng (C.P.) Chung (Lingnan University, Hong Kong) -
This paper compares China’s approaches to soft power toward Japan and Russia by looking at the manifestations of Xi’s Chinese Dream in contemporary practices of media exchange. This comparison specifically explores the correspondence between the 'Chinese Dream' that purportedly guides foreign policy action and the practices in the realm of media exchange. Overall, it argues that the practices of media exchange toward Japan and Russia both broadly correspond with the Chinese Dream by presenting China as an economically strong and culturally attractive country. However, the practice in Japan suggests that this has been done by many of documentaries projecting visions of common Chinese citizens’ and corporations’ successes, in stark contrast to Russia where the focus has been largely constrained to elements of traditional Chinese culture. Given the existence of certain limitations, whether the “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” has generated real attraction or soft power through the implementation of media exchange remains questionable in both cases.
Author: Lingmin Kong (University of York) -
This paper develops a theoretical-methodological framework for investigating institutional change in regional international societies and explicates the approach on the example of Latin American international society and contemporary Chinese foreign policy and Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) reaching Latin America. The related research project is concerned with the question whether China is indeed reconfiguring the normative fabric of global politics in specific world regions. It is thus about two things – Latin America, as a region and international society with its normative underpinnings since the regional turn to the left turn in the 2000s, and about the impact of the BRI and Chinese foreign policy under Xi Jinping on regional order. The framework presented in this paper adds to the diversification of primarily realist and liberal theoretical lenses found in BRI studies. It so by deploying the English School (ES) and its core concepts of international society, and primary, as less, and secondary institutions, as more formalised “norms, rules, and practices” (Schouenborg 2012,45) to analyse the BRI’s possible normative implications for regional orders. The proposed novel approach combines the ES’ turn towards institutional change with constructivist norm research – i.e. contestation of norms, and norm robustness, diffusion, and change – in the inquiry for institutional change. Or differently, in the analysis of Latin American statespersons’ and IGO officials’ discourse and practices regarding possible change of or in interpretations of primary institutions. The paper further discusses benefits of pairing discourse and content analysis with elite interviews to analyse all, macro, meso, and micro levels of discourse.
Author: Simon F Taeuber (University of St Andrews) -
The world has undergone a rapid change in the 21st century, especially with the rise of two Asian giants China and India. The impact of this development on the Indian Ocean region has also been felt. India, which lies in the heart of the Indian Ocean, giving her natural advantage though China does want to be left behind as Indian ocean constitutes the centre of its maritime trade. Chinese assertiveness found its expression in the South China Sea issue. Secondly, its ambitious plan of belt and road initiative, in which the Maritime Silk Road constitutes an essential part that shows growing Chinese influence in the surrounding Indian neighbours. The paper will analyse various issues on which both countries differ and also bring out the importance of the Indian Ocean concerning their claims. It will also examine the impact of this competition on the global front and its likely effects on cooperation and conflict Asia-Pacific region particularly.
Author: Bhupendra Kumar (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
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Panel / Communicating the climate change: Narratives, images and affective imagination Swan RoomSponsor: Environment Working GroupConvener: Alister Miskimmon (Queen's University Belfast)Chair: Alister Miskimmon (Queen's University Belfast)Discussant: Alister Miskimmon (Queen's University Belfast)
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The youth are in the centre stage of the global debate on climate change. Governments and media either brand today’s young to be the main victims of the looming climate catastrophe, or herald them to be the saviours of the planet. With all the limelight and hype, the youth are getting overwhelmed by climate anxiety (Climate Psychology Alliance, online; Hickman, 2019; Institute of Global Health Innovation, online; Good Grief Network, on line; Grantham Institute, on line). Both high expectations and doomsday scenarios put the pressure on a new generation, affect its wellbeing and shape patterns of engagement with the community – now and in the future. Our paper will identify leading narratives on climate change among the youth and ask: How do narratives of anxiety, anger and helplessness compare vs. narratives of being resilient, empowered and capable in the face of the climate crisis?
Informed by the strategic narrative theory (Miskimmon, O’Loughlin and Roselle, 2013) and its tri-partite model of formulation-projection-reception, our paper explores the narratives on climate change in general, and climate anxiety specifically. Focusing on the role of anxiety in the narrative life cycle – an overlooked conceptual dimension in the theorisation of strategic narratives -- we identify and compare narratives of reception on systemic, identity and issue-specific levels (Miskimmon et al., 2013). In particular, we ask how anxiety either pre-mediates or influences the reception of strategic narratives among youth. The application of the theory to the climate change issue-area is novel. Further, strategic narrative research has yet to incorporate how affective charge and anxiety interact with the reception of strategic narratives. Our innovation is also in terms of methods. We analyse and compare narratives generated by the youth in the course of the representative general public survey (conducted in the US in 2018) vis-à-vis narratives tracked in the course of the focus group with educated youth (post-graduate students) using Q Sort method (conducted in New Zealand in 2018). The paper contributes by discussing advantages and limitations of the two methods in the strategic narrative research.Authors: Natalia Chaban (University of Canterbury) , Babak Bahador (George Washington University)* , Pauline Heinrichs (Royal Holloway)* , Iana Sabatovych (University of Canterbury, NZ)* -
We examine how climate change perspectives on YouTube project two forms of knowledge through perspective: knowledge of human/non-human entanglement and knowledge of nature as object of a scientific gaze. The first perspective de-centers the modernist question of the veracity of climate change narratives to instead identify figures through which alternative perspectives can be presented concerning how humanity and nature are co-implicated and how their interdependencies can be managed (see e.g. Povenelli in 2018 The Feminist Anthropocene). The second perspective makes use of drone and satellite imagery that keeps the modernist, objective gaze as central to establishing scientific truth. The paper analyses how perspectives are bound up in narrative projection (YouTube content) and reception (user comments, focus groups). We also track the role of platform infrastructure in directing content to users: YouTube’s next-up algorithm. Through audience analysis we identify how users bring these perspectives into negotiation with their own. This comparison allows us to explore what other perspectives are absent or silenced, how YouTube’s algorithms enable this, and how users feel other perspectives could and should be made present. The analysis interweaves forms of visual and narrative analysis, social media analytics, and audience research. The authors are a collective of scholars from the social sciences and humanities focused on global insecurities who seek to probe how the ‘distribution of the sensible’ (Rancière) and thus the knowable and actionable are configured through global media infrastructure. As the world’s second largest search engine, YouTube is a central to the distribution of climate knowledges.
Authors: Ben O'Loughlin (Royal Holloway, University of London) , Alister Miskimmon (Queen's University Belfast)* , Anastasiya Pschenychnykh (V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University)* -
In autumn 2019, Pro-Kremlin news sites showed a rising trend of publishing controversial content about Youth Strike for Climate and especially about climate change activist Greta Thunberg. For example, RT circulated the idea that global warming is a Russophobic hoax, Fridays for Future is not genuine grassroots protest movement and it actually serves the interests on globalist elite, and the intensified public discussion on climate change is a smokescreen for hiding some military maneuvers of the Western forces. It is noteworthy that Russia’s own policy on the subject is not in accordance with those narratives, in September 2019 Russia formalized its participation in the Paris Agreement in. The goal of this paper is to analyse how RT - the major media outlet financed by the Russian government - depicted the youth climate strikes and to explain which strategic aims it potentially served. Our conceptual and explanatory framework is based on the theory of strategic narrative (Miskimmon et. al 2013, 2017) and concept of affective community (Hutchison 2016). The secondary purpose of the study is to enrich the analytical toolbox of strategic narratives with concepts, originating from semiotics and transmedia storytelling. Transmedia storytelling is a process where different story-entries get dispersed systematically across various platforms for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated narrative experience. We analyse 50 news entries (that include textual, visual and audiovisual content) and rely on interpretative method that combines narrative analysis and multimodal discourse analysis.
Author: Mari-Liis Madisson (Tartu University)
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Panel / Comprehensive Peacebuilding and Sustainable Development on the Korean Peninsula Katie AdieSponsor: Asian Political and International Studies AssociationConvener: Howe Brendan (Ewha Womans University Graduate School of International Studies)Chair: Howe Brendan (Ewha Womans University Graduate School of International Studies)
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The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for “Leave No One Behind” as a mandate for the world in the face of growing inequality, threat on the environment and the people due to climate change, loss of bio-diversity loss and growing ecological footprint (UN 2019). This paper explores what needs to be done with, and for, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea) when and if the economic sanctions put in place by the UN and its member states for threats of nuclear weapons are lifted.
In an effort to understand how the UN process may work for North Korea when the economic sanctions are lifted or at least eased, this paper explores how the UN system has thus far engaged with North Korea and how that could change with a more proactive development cooperation process. Since the SDGs have been agreed for all member states of the UN until 2030 to eradicate extreme poverty, and bring about sustainable development, North Korea’s future development would be enhanced by global development cooperation within the broad UN framework of SDGs. Thus, this paper address three key questions: (1) How has the UN system engaged with DPRK?; (2) Which UN agencies and processes would likely work for DPRK once the UN sanctions are lifted; and (3) What preparations are underway in the DPRK and ROK for the proactive sustainable development process with DPRK?
Author: Kim Eun Mee (Ewha Womans University Graduate School of International Studies) -
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) sought to achieve social development as a basic pillar of poverty eradication in developing countries; but performed worst according to measurements of infant health (infant mortality) and maternal health (maternal mortality). According to Global Sustainable Development Report 2019, the four-year Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) performance from 2016 reveals social inequalities are deepening around the world. In particular, gender inequality exposes women and girls who are considered as the most vulnerable to overlapping social inequalities to health challenges.
On the Korean Peninsula where tensions over North Korea’s nuclear problem have eased, it is meaningful to observe the similarities and differences between South Korea and North Korea on women’s health and health security challenges. While two Koreas have a long history of a patriarchal society with similar Confucian traditions, the paper looks at how gender equality is represented in the course of division for the past 70 years and how it is related to comprehensive health. Under the social and political atmosphere toward a health community on the Korean Peninsula, we could see the policy implications of easing UN sanctions on North Korea in the future and mutual cooperation in women’s health in improving relations between South Korea and North Korea.
The paper will review relevant SDG reports with an emphasis on gender and health-related goals and targets. The similarities and differences between two Koreas on health will be analyzed using the comprehensive gender-sensitive health matrix. In light of the SDGs’ main slogan “Leave No One Behind,” this paper focuses on three key questions: (1) main health security challenges the Korean Peninsula encounters; (2) the status of the implementation of SDGs in gender and health-related goals in the Korean Peninsula; (3) policy recommendations to improve the Korean Peninsula’s health security challenges.
Author: Bang Yoorim (Ewha Womans University) -
South Korea has ratified the Asia-Pacific Regional Convention on the Qualifications in Higher Education in 2018 (also known as the Tokyo Convention). The Tokyo Convention emphasizes that the higher education qualifications of refugees should be recognized as widely as possible unless there is a substantial difference from the qualification obtained in their origin country. It also states that even in cases where there is no documented evidence of their qualifications, refugees, displaced persons and persons in a refugee-like situation should have access to a higher education program for recognition of their qualification for employment activities. Furthermore, obtaining a higher education qualification should be allowed through non-traditional modes such as prior learning and so on. The Tokyo Convention focuses on fairness, consistency, transparency and credibility for refugees in recognition of qualifications in higher education.
While the Tokyo Convention is widely respected for its recognition of refugees’ education credentials throughout eight State Parties, it inevitably runs into some difficulties in South Korea when faced with the conflicting refugee system between North and South Korea. The South Korean government ratified the North Korean Refugees Protection and Settlement Support Act in 1997 after large numbers fled famine in the North. This act includes its own qualification recognition policy for North Korean refugees, and it plays an important role for North Korean refugees settling down in South Korean society. This paper, therefore, seeks to understand better the North Korean refugee system in South Korea and its limitations with regard to the Asia Pacific Regional Convention on the Qualifications in Higher Education. Moreover, it offers policy prescription for the greater influx of refugees to South Korea.
Author: Lee Eunkoo (Ewha Womans University,) -
This study aims to examine refugee policy and its implementation in South Korea through the perspectives of human security and sustainable development. Given the geopolitical condition in the Korean Peninsula, the South Korean government has prioritized North Korean refugees rather than refugees from other nationalities. However, globally recognized refugees are continuously increasing in an unprecedented way due to growing hazardous issues such as climate change, pandemics, and terrorism so forth. The number of applicants for refugee status are sharply increasing in South Korea as well. In this urgency, the traditional security perspective has shown its limits in controlling transnational and intra-conflicts and protect vulnerable victims. The importance of military power is growing for South Korea at the turmoil of current regional dynamics; nevertheless, this study argues that South Korea should broaden its security perspective to nontraditional and human-centered approaches not only for protecting those in perils but also securing regional and international peace in the long term. South Korea gradually developed refugee policies and expanded its focus by following international norms and endeavors of civil societies. However, drawbacks and limitations in practices remain in ensuring freedom from fear for refugees and persons in a refugee-like situation. Also, having equal access to education or vocation is critical for sustainable development. By following global and regional conventions, comprehensive recognition of refugees’ qualifications may guarantee their freedom from want, moreover peace and prosperity.
Author: Lee Heeseo (Ewha Womans University) -
The promotion of peace between the two Koreas has tended to focus on state-to-state engagement in order to structure the decision-making of the "other". This has involved tactics and policies related to defense, deterrence, and engagement/appeasement. Unfortunately, all such endeavors have failed, and perhaps are doomed to fail in the future. One of the major reasons for these failures is lack of recognition of the role played by the interaction between national governments and their constituencies. This internal game has a significant bearing on the external game played by governments in Seoul and Pyongyang. Only by unpacking the "black box of decision” and considering the internal pressures and challenges key decision-makers face can we understand how international insecurity is generated, and also produce a new set of policy prescriptions for actors and commentators. The failure to consider potential impact of social forces and the processes of socialization comprise a second set of shortcomings to traditional attempts to construct of peace on the Korean Peninsula. This paper proposes also, therefore, to examine the agent within its social context, as this gives meaning to the agent’s goal-seeking. The analytical framework will reflect the social constructivist paradigm. Some varieties of both realism and liberalism also adopt structural or regime components – whether the anarchic operating environment, international organizations, or the global economy – and examine the impact these structural constraints have upon rational decision makers. But for the social constructivist, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and the impact of the structure cannot necessarily be measured in positivististic ways.
Author: Howe Brendan (Ewha Womans University Graduate School of International Studies)
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Roundtable / Forced Migration in Theory and Practice Pandon Room
This roundtable will bring together academics and practitioners in order to foster a critical exploration of key concepts relating to forced migration: welcome, membership and inclusion, protection, sanctuary, solidarity, hospitality and trauma. In the spirit of theorizing practice and practicing theory, the roundtable will provide for discussion of the politics, practice and pedagogy of these key concepts within institutions including the United Nations, states, local government authorities, communities and universities. Specific practices to be discussed include:
• Global Migration Governance
• State Securitisation Practices
• City of Sanctuary
• University of Sanctuary
• Trauma Informed PedagogyDrawing on a variety of cases and experiences at different levels of engagement, the roundtable will consider the limitations and potential these concepts provide and explore the relationship between global discourses on forced migration and local practices that often traverse them.
Sponsor: Ethics and World Politics Working GroupChair: Kelly Staples (University of Leicester)Participants: FOTEINI KALANTZI (University of Oxford) , Liz Hibberd (Manchester City of Sanctuary ) , Helen Dexter (University of Leicester) , Aleks Palanac (University of Leicester) , Jonathan Gilmore (University of Manchester) , Tendayi Bloom (University of Birmingham) -
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Panel / Health prioritisation in national and international institutions CarilolSponsor: Global Health Working GroupConvener: Adele Langlois (University of Lincoln)Chair: Stephen Roberts (LSE)Discussant: Eva Hilberg
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This paper will investigate regulatory bottlenecks in global health. International regulations typically evolve over four stages: (1) need identification and acceptance (2) drafting (3) adoption and (4) implementation. Effective regulation can be stymied at any of these stages. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), for example, has been at the forefront of bioethics regulation in the last two decades. Yet recent attempts to establish international instruments have failed to get beyond the idea stage, even when the need for regulation has been clearly identified. In 2015 UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee recommended a ban on human reproductive cloning, but the organisation has not acted on this. In September 2017 the same committee, in its draft report on big data and health, recommended that UNESCO negotiate a convention on the protection of privacy, but this has also not been taken forward. Even when regulations are drafted and adopted, these processes can take several years and interest-based bargaining can lead to weak or ambiguous content. Implementation is often patchy, hampered by lack of capacity and/or will at both international and national levels. This paper will present a theoretical framework for the ‘regulatory bottleneck’ concept, drawn from the regime theory and global governance literature within International Relations, as well as theories of norm diffusion, law, organisational management and public policy. The framework with be the springboard for case study research on regulatory bottlenecks in global health, including UNESCO’s failure to develop a convention on health data privacy.
Author: Adele Langlois (University of Lincoln) -
The increasing complexity of Brazilian foreign policy, illustrated by the plurality of agencies taking part at the policymaking process as well by the diversity of its agenda between 1990s up to 2014 approximately, has raised many academic questions. This paper discusses how global health became a strong topic in the Brazilian foreign policy by examining the relationship between the Brazilian Foreign Ministry (Itamaraty) and the Brazilian Health Ministry, with particular attention to their views on human rights and national interests and their raking of priorities. Our main argument is that, despite the significant Brazilian expertise on collective health international cooperation, one of the reasons why it took so long for global health to become an important issue of Brazilian Foreign Policy, should be searched on the institutional culture differences of each ministry.
Authors: Leticia Pinheiro (IESP-UERJ) , Livia Avelhan (FGV-SP) -
This article critically analyses the increasing involvement of EU fiscal governance in public health through the ‘European Semester’ fiscal coordination tool. The European Commission (EC) has a commitment to mainstreaming health in non-health policy areas, in line with the ‘Health in All Policies’ (HiAP) concept. However, this article argues that HiAP is a chameleonic idea. This means that its (intentional) level of vagueness may lead to counterproductive consequences. In the current context of the establishment of the new ‘European Social Fund+’ (ESF+), one such counterproductive effect suspected is that HiAP language can be used to justify gradually watering down the EU’s consideration for public health. This article evaluates the legitimacy of this suspicion drawing on two analytical tools: first it uses the concept of ‘constitutional asymmetry’ to analyse the relationship between the European Semester and the ESF+. This section highlights the EC agenda to increasingly streamline overarching EC priorities, rather than prioritising health per se. The article then draws on discourse analysis to explain how this constitutional asymmetry is discursively supported and reinforced in the area of public health.
Author: Charlotte Godziewski (University of Sheffield)
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Panel / Making and Unmaking International Law Armstrong RoomSponsor: International Law and Politics Working GroupConvener: Andrea Birdsall (University of Edinburgh)Chair: Henry Lovat (University of Glasgow)
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In the light of calls (such as Anne-Marie Slaughter’s) for international lawyers to make their discipline more relevant to international relations (IR) theorists, this paper explores international lawyers’ rejection of this “one way street” of communication, and argues that the English School (ES) of IR theory and international law have much to offer each other. The paper focuses on international peace and security law, specifically humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P); and examines some key features of the ES to explore links with the discipline of international law.
Early ES theory identified three ‘traditions’ of thought within international political theory – the realist (Machiavellian), revolutionist (Kantian) and rationalist, international society (Grotian), traditions. The common values of the society of states are presented within the ES as being either pluralist or solidarist. Pluralism has traditionally been viewed as the influence of realism on international society, displaying a thin consensus on values and norms that did not stray much beyond the importance of keeping order between members. Solidarism has been presented as the progressive, cosmopolitan-influenced, view of a global society where humanity is more important than states; where shared values moved beyond coexistence to cooperation and the achievement of justice for individuals. International law is a key component of ES theory, as the tool used by the society of states to mitigate conditions of anarchy and as a demonstration of the degree of value consensus within this society. Many scholars of international peace and security law and R2P either refer to ES theory explicitly or use the terminology and concepts of solidarism and solidarity to refer to an increasing global value consensus around protecting human rights and liberal governance.
This paper challenges the traditional views of pluralism and solidarism and how these are perceived as being represented in international law, exploring the dark side of solidarism and presenting pluralism as an ethical alternative.
Author: Alexandra Bohm (University of Lincoln) -
This paper rethinks international law via the prohibition of weapons, examining the overall issue of whether arms control and disarmament principles apply in the same way to different categories of weapons. Using the concept of ‘taboo’, it examines the prohibitions of certain instruments of war which have developed throughout history in relation to the moral opprobrium concerning their usage. Through an examination of international treaties on conventional weapons, chemical weapons, and nuclear weapons, this paper explores the overall issue of whether arms control and disarmament principles apply in the same manner to different categories of weapons. This area of law, which has traditionally aimed to protect combatants and non-combatants from unnecessary suffering in war, has come to be regarded as an important component of international peace and security through the limitation and/or control of the uses and number of certain weapons. Inquiring into the motivations which lay behind the prohibition of certain types of weapons, the use of ‘taboo’ as a concept allows for an understanding of the different motivations and interests lying at the heart of arms control and disarmament treaties. Providing a valuable lens through which to understand the origins of different prohibitions of certain instruments of war and how these have been developed internationally.
Author: Carmen Chas (University of Kent) -
This paper proposes an interdisciplinary account of the idea of the Rule of Law based on the concept of order. The concept of order is crucial to scholarship involving the study of both international law and international politics. Different conceptions of order animate the disciplines of both International Law and International Relations. Lawyers have devoted the bulk of their scholarly endeavors to creating order in law, turning a seemingly disparate set of judicial decisions, treaties, etc. into a coherent body of law. Another conception of order informs the study of international relations: order among states. The idea that functions as a hinge between these conceptions of order is the idea of the Rule of Law. This paper argues that at the heart of the idea of the Rule of Law is the conviction that order in law can create order through law. Understanding this idea requires studying its two main tenets: First, the law can be systematically arranged in such a manner that it allows identifying its content precisely and predictably. Second, the legal certainty that is created by having an ordered body of law acts both as an antidote to the arbitrary exercise of power and as a symbol of political unity. Understanding the relationship between order in law and order through law in this way allows to abandon the insular notion of compliance with international rules and to replace it with the notion of adherence to the rule of law.
Authors: Sué González Hauck , Sebastian Plappert (University of St. Gallen) -
International organizations and international human rights protection mechanisms have long been used by human rights activists to circumvent and undermine resistance by governments to their concerns (see, for example, Keck’s and Sikkink’s Transnational Advocacy Networks, which use a ‘boomerang effect’ to induce concessions from unresponsive states; or Risse et al.’s ‘spiral model of human rights change’). But are these international norms and instruments also suitable to protect the rights of intersectional groups? Based on the analysis of state party reports and NGO shadow reports to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), as well as recommendations by the respective monitoring bodies, the paper explores whether and how European state parties, domestic activists and international agencies use these international human rights instruments to protect the rights of intersectional groups. Do international human rights mechanisms lead to a ‘multiple advantage'’due to a recent rise of awareness for intersectionalities in international law? Or are groups at the intersections of race, gender, and disability subject to a ‘double jeopardy'’due to the cumulation of different forms of discrimination and exclusion? Introducing the perspective of intersectionality to international studies, the answer to these questions will help to determine whether international human rights instruments and mechanisms are promising channels also for intersectional groups to circumvent resistances to the protection of their rights at the national level, or whether they rather should be included as targets for reform to make them more responsive to the concerns of these groups.
Author: Anne Jenichen (Aston University) -
How should we understand and evaluate this emerging trend of Syrian conflict-related universal jurisdiction (UJ) proceedings in Europe? This paper advances an alternative normative framework of UJ to the ‘cosmopolitan model,’ in which UJ proceedings are understood as the enforcement of universal values on behalf of ‘humanity’ at large. Rather, the paper formulates a transnational model of UJ in which the normativity of UJ is conceptualised in terms of the host state’s responsibility stemming from the influx of refugee and migrants. This transnational model of UJ emphasizes how prosecution by host states of international crimes that happened in the ‘home’ jurisdiction of refugees and migrants can become a process of ensuring that the host communities are safe and hospitable, providing a means by which the subjecthood and socio-political agency of refugees can be reconstituted. By focusing on the relationship between prosecuting/investigating states and the refugee/victim community that pushes for accountability, the paper postulates that the transnational model not only provides a sense of normative legitimacy and political urgency to UJ prosecutions, but also allows for a more effectively assessment of the potential political effects of UJ prosecutions. Ultimately, the paper suggests that ‘dual model’ of normative theory that is sensitive to both the cosmopolitan and transnational aspects of UJ is necessary to reflect the emerging practice of UJ proceedings and evaluate the normative implications that arises from them.
Author: Yuna Han
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Panel / Militarism and emotion: feeling with and feeling for figures of war Council ChamberSponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working GroupConvener: Naomi Head (University of Glasgow)Chair: Naomi Head (University of Glasgow)
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The ability to kill in war has often been attributed to propaganda that has made the enemy subhuman, or to technology which has placed the enemy at a more comfortable distance. This paper, however, traces an alternative trajectory of feeling for the enemy as a ‘strange friend’ as Wilfred Owen famously put it, in which enmity is swiftly transformed into forms of fellow feeling. As Owen’s work suggests, and a wealth of other soldier writings confirm, intimacy with the enemy is not necessarily a barrier to killing him. Taking Owen and his influences as a focal point, this paper considers encounters with the enemy in literature, philosophy, and soldiers’ life writings. I seek to explore the range of work done by announcements of feeling for the enemy both to challenge and enable militarism.
Author: Holly Furneaux (Cardiff University) -
The “hearts and minds” agenda of contemporary counterinsurgency explicitly located war in cultural and affective terrain, setting up imagined geographic and cultural dichotomies between the West and its ‘enemies’ in so doing. What emerges from the population-centric COIN doctrine brought to bear in Iraq and Afghanistan by the U.S. military and its allies is a deeply affective project. Examining U.S. military programmes such as the Human Terrain System and Female Engagement Teams through a range of first-hand participant and documentary accounts reveals a range of affective relations embedded within a complex militarised political project. By asking ‘feeling what for whom?’, this paper explores the everyday politics of empathy contained within the urgent political demand for more adequate socio-cultural understanding of the Iraqi and Afghan ‘other’ to support the military in their mission. It also examines the argument that ‘hearts and minds’ represents a ‘kinder’ and ‘gentler’ way of fighting war, thus seeking to re-orient our attention to the forms of violence that are written out of the cultural narrative of population-centric counterinsurgency.
Author: Naomi Head -
This paper will investigate how global and regional dynamics of power and histories of conflict have been personalised in the ethics and identities of soldiers who have fought in Afghanistan, comparing those of the British and American militaries. It will seek to explore how these soldiers, themselves shaped by intersectional identities and power structures, have come to view and conceptualise the cultures and motivations of those they fought against in conflicts styled as the redemption of a nation’s honour. This combined historical and anthropological project will use archival data to reconstruct the perspectives of British soldiers who fought in the Anglo-Afghan wars. It will then utilise ethnographic interviews of former American military personnel deployed in Operation Enduring Freedom (2001-2014) and Operation Enduring Sentinel (2014-present). It will explore how a bond of empathy, and even respect, was formed across the frontlines, created by the mutual community of experiencing structural exploitation nested in globalised and localised dynamics of power in a war they fought but had no control over.
Author: Marcello Fantoni (University of Kent) -
Civilian support for the armed forces and/or veteran communities in Western nations is oftentimes premised on the basis that as a civilian it is impossible to understand the demands and hardships of war and military life. At the same time, support from civilian populations at increasing (geographical and emotional) remove from war rely upon ideas of commonality and shared values between military figures and the civilian communities they claim to protect and serve. Drawing on ethnographic reflections of the 2017 and 2020 Invictus Games and 2017 Ms Veteran America, this paper thinks through the ways in which feelings of compassion and empathy are generated from the (largely) civilian audience towards the military and veteran participants, while their service and experiences are simultaneously positioned as exceptional and beyond (civilian) comprehension. Making use of feminist, critical race and critical disability studies, the paper asks what histories and narratives these figures of war become visible and recognisable through, as well as who is (and isn’t) part of these communities of feeling. The paper also considers what experiences of everyday war-making these feelings of compassion, empathy and exceptionalism render invisible.
Author: Julia Welland (University of Warwick) -
And soon, the air between the data points was stale
What function does the racialised Palestinian hold in Israeli techno-speak and Israeli claims to territory? More broadly, what place do racialised targets of war hold in technological ‘advancements’ in war making. This intervention draws on my ethnographic research into the design and marketing of technological shifts in Israeli and European weapons industries. Drawing on philosophies of blackness (Wynter; Warren) I address how the Palestinian is expressed through Israeli war technologies as equipment upon which to build white supremacy, modernity and settler-colonialism. In this intervention I speak from the position of different technologies. In speaking from the position of the object I respond to Katherine McKittrick’s observations of what is excluded from archives of violence against racialised bodies, communities and land. I speak to emotions, stories and connections that are in excess to the object’s ability to wage violence. It is through these spaces and writing from these spaces that I explore how expressions of emotion and care through black philosophies and critiques of modernity might lead to compassion.
Author: Catherine Chiniara Charrett (University of Westminster)
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Panel / New Syngergies in IR Bewick RoomSponsor: Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working GroupConvener: CRIPT Working groupChair: Christof Royer (University of St Andrews )
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It is commonly argued that while ethnographic approaches to the study of negotiations generate unique insights which cannot be gained through any other method, at the same time this an extremely labor-intensive and time consuming research method with one major drawback being that it is prone to a lack of scientific rigor and objectivity. I argue, however, that this method is the most concrete and empirical of methods, taking nothing for granted and utilizing less mediated knowledge than others.
With this as my point-of-departure, this project breaks new ground by applying ethnographic methods to problems of international trade negotiation. Approaching negotiators as a network involved in constructing the meaning of justice in international trade, I employ multi-sited ethnography, participant observation, interviews, field notes, and textual analysis through close reading, in order to tease out meanings of justice that inform the arguments of trade negotiators representing small developing states in the Commonwealth Caribbean. My approach is informed by a feminist research ethic with a normative commitment to promote justice for small developing states in the context of trade negotiations.Author: LISA SAMUEL (NEW YORK UNIVERSITY) -
Since its emergence as a topic of international concern in the late-1990s, the so-called “history problem” remains a key issue in East Asian international politics and in Japanese political culture. As a series of controversies – including the euphemistically known “comfort women” – it centralizes around the denial of Second World War-era atrocities committed by Japan. Taken up by various intellectuals and right-wing ideologues, this historical revisionism is considered a turning point in what critics have called Japanese conservatism’s turn towards a reactionary nationalism. This paper explores the intellectual foundations of this ideological turn through the political thought of the cultural critic Etō Jun. Writing throughout the second half of the twentieth century, Etō was a prominent literary and social critic, conservative thinker, and proponent of historical revisionism. The aims of the paper are two-fold: first, it illustrates the worldview informing the conservative understanding of post-war history, such that conservatism has embraced this movement. Second, borrowing from Nietzsche’s critique of historical thinking, the paper shows the radical nature of this historiography. It shows that conservatives consider cultural authenticity to have been politically suppressed by foreign powers after Japan’s defeat; as a result, they advocate the need to “rectify” this state of affairs through historical revisionism. The paper argues that this debate over an international history is – rather than the resuscitation of pre-war social order – a claim over its connection to the present in order to shape a nationalist future. Historical revisionism, then, is in itself a political aim toward nationalist cultural ends.
Author: Karin Narita (Queen Mary University of London) -
Russian and Chinese elites have reacted positively to electoral successes of right-wing populist movements and leaders. Observers in both countries positively assessed the rise of right-wing populism in democratic states as beneficial to Russia and China in terms of domestic politics as strengthening the legitimacy of authoritarian governance and international politics as weakening the Western primacy. They welcome the renewed emphasis on sovereignty. Anti-individualist, anti-universal and identitarian ideas can be assumed to gain support in Moscow and Beijing. The drive for sovereignty and unique character of each nation/political community fits with the evolution of Russia and China’s official narratives in the 2010s. On the other hand, their assessments of costs and benefits in terms of Russia and China’s foreign policies and their roles in multilateral global governance differ. Russian elites are more supportive of right-wing populism than their Chinese counterparts. The latter recognize costs and challenges of the rise of right-wing populism for Chinese engagement with the world, in particular in terms of climate change governance and economic governance. This, in turn, limits the potential for practical convergence between rising powers and right-wing populism.
Author: Marcin Kaczmarski (University of Glasgow) -
Established theoretical perspectives in International Relations (IR) accord little time to rigorous engagement with anarchist and pacifist contributions concerning the analysis of core IR themes such as war and peace, the international order, and the ethics of political violence. As some recent scholarship has demonstrated, however, both anarchism and pacifism do offer valuable and nuanced arguments to contribute to rigorous debate on such issues. An anarcho-pacifist perspective in particular offers a focused vantage point from which to gaze upon the international order. The pacifist grounding enables: a critique of the dominant fetishization of the instrumentality of violence; a warning about the self-fulfilling nature of militarism; and a rich set of nuanced and varied reflections concerning the limits to the legitimacy and effectiveness of political violence. The anarchist lens adds to this: a diagnosis of the international system as one embedded in a variety of intersectional kinds of domination; a set of reflections about alternative structurings of the international order; and an unorthodox understanding of agency in international politics. This puts an anarcho-pacifist theory of IR in a position to either acknowledge or dispute claims central to more established schools of IR including classical realism, neorealism, classical liberalism, neoliberal institutionalism, constructivism, as well as Marxist and feminist theories of IR. An anarcho-pacifist theory of IR thus offers a refreshing reading of the international order, drawing attention away from common realist and liberal conceptions and towards a sharp critical analysis of the global stratification of political, socio-economic and strategic interests and organisations, and reformulating ethical questions and pathways for agency in the process.
Author: Alexandre Christoyannopoulos (Loughborough University)
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Panel / Political mobilisation, hegemony and new democratic politics in the Mediterranean, Middle East and Asia: inequality and the crisis of liberalism Parsons RoomSponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working GroupConvener: Jessica Northey (Coventry University)Chair: Omer Tekdemir (University of Bolton)
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The crisis of political representation in an illiberal populism and majoritarian democracy of Turkey
The crisis of political representation in an illiberal populism and majoritarian democracy of Turkey
Author: Omer Tekdemir (University of Bolton) -
The resurgence of nationalism reflects how antagonisms are changing, and democracies become more polarised as identities and patriotism are articulated in new ways. These processes reflect new articulations of hegemony and antagonism, which were the key concepts in the political theory of the late Ernesto Laclau. This paper follows up Laclau’s concept of antagonism as a way to analyse and understand the significance of the new Hindu nationalist regime in India and their redefinition of the people. The conceptual approach is relevant because of the ways in which the right-wing government has provided leeway for radical rhetoric, hostilities and controversial policies that aim to change important policies India’s liberal democracy. Rhetorically, a contested distinction between patriots and so-called ‘anti-nationals’ has been used to rearticulate hegemony and curb dissent. Additionally, new policies appear to confirm a reinterpretation of hegemony and the people, ranging from cow politics, borders to the contested Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019. The paper will discuss these cases and the ways in which the concept of antagonism offers a possibility to make sense of hegemony in the study of nationalism in liberal democracies today.
Author: Dag Erik Berg (Molde University College) -
Since 22 February 2019, Algerians have peacefully mobilised on an unprecedented scale for democracy. Known as the Hirak, massive weekly marches of millions led to President Bouteflika standing down, politicians, and the former secret services head being arrested and tried for corruption. Largely ignored in the West, this phenomenal mobilisation led to a previously unthinkable challenge to the hegemony of the Bouteflika regime and the structural inequalities it represented. Ensuing has been a rethinking of political life in Algeria, of the potential for political transformation and of new frames for understanding state-society relations. Despite a divisive and contested presidential election in December 2019, the Hirak has continued to unite civil society on the underlying goals of the movement related to democracy. Despite being leaderless (or perhaps because of this) the Hirak has lasted longer than any other social movement in the region, and it has until now remained for the most part peaceful. How and why have Algerians in 2019 managed to take on such a powerful regime, without violence, despite deep frustrations and a history of violent political change? What are the implications for future democratic reform and political activism in Algeria? Using constructivist approaches to understanding the postcolonial regime and drawing on in-depth fieldwork in Algeria with civil society organisations over the last decade, this paper will analyse the implications of the Hirak for democracy, nationalism and political legitimacy in Algeria.
Author: Jessica Northey (Coventry University) -
Recent social movements following the aftermath of the Arab Spring in the city of Amman have illustrated the central role of human agency and the urban public space as a platform signifying the public struggle for democratic transformation. The current political and urban landscape in Amman calls for (re)shaping urban discourse and (re)structuring power relations and urban policies while taking into account its diverse sociodemographic characteristics. This paper presents the voices of youth participants (aged 18-35), who make up the majority of the total youthful population across the diverse host and migrant community in Amman, in response to the tightening grip of systemic processes, tokenistic forms of engagement and pressing social, economic and political inequality –in relation to the urban public space. Additionally, this paper presents youth participant perspectives on how urban public space can serve as a platform for democratic transformation and its influence on building or hindering social cohesion and inclusion, as it intersects with notions of identity, belonging and active citizenship. Drawing from constructivist approaches, this paper argues that mobilizing youth in urban politics and activating the public space as a platform for social, cultural and political activity are instrumental for shaping planning processes and fostering democratic transformation. Furthermore, the argument highlights a need for such a mechanism to be treated by governance structures as an asset as opposed to a threat to social order. The analysis shows that the central argument of this paper is conductive for governance structures such as Greater Amman Municipality, to support their capacity to create the sustained institutional and physical space to support mobilization in urban politics and in urban public space and in doing so to gain public trust and collaboration, which are essential to building a Just City.
Author: Rana Aytug (Coventry University)
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Roundtable / Security in an ice-free Arctic: interdisciplinary perspectives on Arctic geopolitics Sandhill Room
The Arctic first emerged as a hotbed of military activity during the Cold War. Technological advances opened up the possibility of overflight by strategic bombers and under-ice passage by nuclear submarines. Defence planners learned to work around the permanent presence of ice.
In recent decades though, it has become clear that the future of the Arctic is one that will be increasingly ice-free. As the international community comes to terms with the region's physical transformation, tensions are starting to build. A struggle is emerging over what constitutes legitimate interest and activity in the Arctic. Much of it centres on concerns about purportedly innocent scientific, commercial and military activity serving as a front for different kinds of strategic infiltration in different parts of the Arctic. As a result, the region is increasingly caught up with the global competition being played out by the West, Russia and China.
This roundtable brings together perspectives from International Relations and Political Geography to consider what security means to different actors - local, regional and global - in an increasingly ice-free Arctic, and what that might portend for international relations as profound environmental change is encountered in others parts of the world in the coming decades.
Sponsor: War Studies Working GroupChair: Duncan Depledge (Loughborough University)Participants: Caroline Kennedy-Pipe (Loughborough University) , James Rogers (SDU) , Klaus Dodds (Royal Holloway, University of London) , Ingrid Medby (Oxford Brookes University) -
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Panel / Translation and narratives in international politics Stephenson RoomSponsor: Interpretivism in International Relations Working GroupConvener: IIRG Working groupChair: Katarzyna Kaczmarska (University of Edinburgh)Discussant: Hannes Hansen-Magnusson (Cardiff University)
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Conspiracy Theories, Right-Wing Populism and Foreign Policy: The Case of the Alternative for Germany
This paper analyses the relationship between conspiracy theories, right-wing populism and foreign policy by shedding light on the affective force of conspiracy theories in mobilising “the people”. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, it conceptualises conspiracy theories as fantasies that promise to satisfy subjects’ desire for a complete identity by accusing “hidden” forces of blocking this perceived-to-be-lost but ultimately unattainable sense of wholeness. The paper argues that conspiracy theories allow populists to appeal to voters through a dualistic representation of global politics that (1)blames conspirators and their puppets as the root of such feelings of lack, (2)transgresses the conventions of the mainstream discourse by appealing to the obscene, and (3)valorises the populist actor for uncovering the insidious plot against the common good and defending popular sovereignty. While conspiracy theories have been studied in other disciplines, the International Relations literature has paid very little attention to them and, if at all, discussed their role in the context of the United States. This article illustrates its arguments with the case of the populist radical right Alternative for Germany and examines the role of conspiracy theories in its attempt to stage itself as “true” representative of the German people and in its foreign policy positions.
Author: Thorsten Wojczewski -
This paper reconstructs a conversation with local Polish border guards who experienced and effected the shift from the military structure of border security under the socialism regime to the law enforcement setup of integrated border management under the EU Schengen regime.
The aim is to contribute to ‘provincializing’ liberalism as an ideological formation by probing its paradoxes at the psychosocial level where the affect and social structure are intertwined. In order to do so, the paper takes an interpretive approach to making sense of the legacy of EU liberal transition as narrated by two casts of post-transition characters which seemingly epitomize contrary views on freedom: border guards as protagonists of exclusion and the researcher as a vocal advocate of inclusion. There are two tropes in particular which bring these parties together despite their fundamental differences: (1) the continuous traversing of the sense of emancipation and paternalism in the process of ‘becoming’ a European border guard and a European critical scholar; (2) the entrenchment of militarism in both the border guard and the researcher. While the latter seems almost commonsense with regard to a border practitioner, the close-up on affective struggles with militarism illuminates the practice in ways which are rarely explored in the literature. Regarding the researcher, militarism reveals itself in the “will-to-know” as a form of authoritarianism that pervades liberal knowledge production.
The historical, affective, and localised insights from this conversation are fed back to a reflection about particularities of the relationship with liberalism in Central Europe.
Author: Xymena Kurowska -
Notwithstanding the aesthetic turn’s shift towards perceiving objets d’art as representative arenas which host ‘the very location of politics’ (Bleiker, 2001: 510), the position of – and opportunities offered by – the employment of literary works in International Relations has yet to be fully theorised as an interpretive methodology. As scholars and commentators, we are comfortable in deploying our “Orwellian world” metaphors, but never reach for a Behnian[1] reading of Orientalising discourse, or a Steinbeckian approach to restorative justice in post-conflict dialogue – in sum, we have largely neglected to recognise exactly how literary works provide the researcher with a toolkit. In this paper, I theorise a two-fold function of literature as a lens through which to analyse international relations: 1) fiction enables us to inhabit a sphere of existence and experience which may otherwise have been inaccessible to our own positionalities, no least because it systematises the empirical world into a coherent narrative that can be logically comprehended, and therefore enables us to make the world intelligible; and 2) in presenting us with an aestheticised political practice (Edkins, 2013), literature invites deliberation, critique, and transformation of the reader’s own world.
[1] After Aphra Behn, the author of Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave (1688).
Author: Mary Dodd (University of St Andrews) -
The term mercenary invokes an eternal phenomenon. Deriving etymologically from the Latin mercenarius, it has been translated across ages in almost the same fashion, contributing to the transhistorical categorisation of its signified. This paper contests this view, claiming that the word and concept ‘mercenary’ acquired its contemporary meaning and eternal character at the turn of the 18th century. By investigating discourses within this time frame, I show how the term ‘mercenary’ was constituted as a noun to construct the hierarchical dichotomy between the ‘soldier’ as the normative ideal and the ‘mercenary’ as its deviant conceptual opposite. This dichotomy served an important function in the constitution of the international, as it created a clear dividing line between the spaces of peace and development inside, patrolled by the soldier, and the unruly and warlike outside from which the mercenary originates. Furthermore, by turning the ‘mercenary’ into an eternal phenomenon that can be found always and everywhere, a trans-historical nature is simultaneously ascribed to the state. Historiography on mercenaries is thus poetic as it produces a fictive past in which contemporary phenomena and orders are superimposed upon past structures, whereby the past’s otherness is erased in favor of universal truths.
Author: Malte Riemann (Royal Military Academy Sandhurst)
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Panel / American Militarization and Intervention: Strategies and Tactics in the 21st Century Katie AdieSponsor: US Foreign Policy Working GroupConvener: Kyle Grayson (BISA)Chair: Ben Kienzle
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This paper looks at US policy towards Venezuela during the presidencies of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. By developing a ‘critical’ approach to the study of US-Latin American relations, it will not only identify the key interest groups that affect US foreign policy but also show how they intervene in the policy-making process. Many works explore the broad economic, military and geopolitical power disparities between the United States and Latin America, but they do not explain how these corporate, commercial and military interests actually affect the decisions taken by US policy makers. Are there business lobbies that directly influence policy-makers, for example, and if so, how? The paper considers the policy making process in its social context and traces the informal social networks between officials, politicians, the private sector and other powerful societal groups. By doing so it aims to identify the inequalities in access to governmental decision-making and consider how a hegemonic image of Venezuela is constructed and disseminated. A critical approach should consider the perceptions, assumptions and even prejudices, of politicians and officials – how seriously should we take a Trump tweet written at 3 o’clock in the morning?
Author: Livingstone Grace (University of Cambridge) -
Videogames are frequently dismissed as childish toys with little obvious implications for real world politics - but the truth is quite different. Videogames have grown to be the largest purchased entertainment sector in the world, with military games representing a significant proportion of such sales. The existing scholarship on videogames, largely ignored by IR scholars, suggests that they have highly persuasive effects with important implications for US foreign policy. This article argues that videogames currently pose considerable challenges to US foreign policy by undermining soft power and public diplomacy. As cultural products, games are themselves a form of communication which informs popular understanding of the US in overseas populations. Yet while public diplomacy and soft power are attempting to portray a view of the US as multi-lateral and committed to trade, aid and diplomacy, military videogames present an image of unilateralism and militarism. First, in promoting highly militarised solutions to complex social problems, videogames reaffirm a commonly held view of American desire for militarily enforced hegemony. Second, recent controversies around games have caused a number of diplomatic incidents which are highly counter-productive to America’s aims of promoting its objectives through public diplomacy and soft power.
Author: Nick Robinson (University of Leeds) -
Israel has been unique in the context of state formation as its emergence and survival has always been amidst wars and armed conflicts. Israel-US alignment is important specifically in terms of security. The very concept of security is not a new phenomenon it has been a wider issue of debate among scholars over the period of time. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), was one of the first major examples of military and security alliance that came in 1949.
The paper is an effort to bring out various aspects of the bilateral alignment of the United States and Israel. In order to do so, it covers the Military and Security partnership of the two. The paper looks at how the US has been involved in shaping and increasing the military industry of Israel. Firstly it brings out the historical development of the defense industry of Israel. Secondly, it analyses the role of external powers and NATO in shaping up the Israeli military industry. Thirdly the paper examines the role of the US in the development of the defense industry in Israel. Lastly paper looks into the implications challenges that have been faced by the Israeli military industry.Author: Vijay Gothwal (Jawaharlal Nehru University) -
Abstract
What is the nature of U.S. humanitarian intervention policy? Security scholars have wrestled with this question since the institutionalization of human rights has moved to the international political agenda. At times, the answer seems clear when pundits, policymakers, and activists claim that 'politics stops at the waters age.' This widely cited words stand for the idea that when it comes to the use of force, U.S. political leaders speak with one voice. Critics argue that such claims have no traction because intervention is almost always politically contested. Yet as I demonstrate in this study, U.S. political leaders engage in two-level games played simultaneously at the domestic and international level. This study examines the interaction among four sets of institutional players in a two-level game: the president, the congress, the UN-Security Council, and the bureaucratic politics. It analyzes the effects that material interests and ideological devisions, interactions, and institutions have on humanitarian intervention decisions. I use a multimethod research design to explain the U.S. humanitarian intervention policy. I focus on the mixture of game theory and case studies. The game theory I use to generate deductive representations of U.S. humanitarian intervention decision making, which I then empirically test via process tracing.Author: Josef Harrasser (University of Innsbruck)
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Panel / Britain’s China-Factor: Sino-British Relations and the Economic-Security Interests Conundrum Armstrong RoomSponsor: International Political Economy Working GroupConvener: Zeno Leoni (King's College London)Chair: Zeno Leoni (King's College London)Discussant: Majed Akhter (King's College London)
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This paper employs investigative research methods to re-examine the key episodes of Sino-British engagement in the 2010s. This reassessment offers a critical investigation of the so-called “golden age” including PRC involvement in the UK civil nuclear sector; RMB internationalisation in London; and the GlaxoSmithKline scandal in China. This shadow IR approach uncovers extensive new evidence that suggests a division within the British establishment between financial and security experts over PRC engagement. The paper reasons that commercial entities have taken an increasingly prominent role in UK foreign policy generation via elite linkages and the “revolving door” phenomenon. This development has reshaped British priorities in the global arena in general, as well as UK-China engagement in particular. What is revealed is a complex Sino-British engagement landscape where commercial entities are able to assume prominent gatekeeper roles. This finding calls into question not only our understanding of the UK’s China policy, but also Cartesian assumptions of international relations such as unit division by territory, sovereignty and identity.
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In recent years, an increasing number of countries has begun to consider foreign direct investments (FDI) originating from China as matter of national security. The UK has been no exception; starting from 2017, it has progressively strengthened the government’s ability to discretionally restrict and block the inflow of investments into the country. FDI in se are an inherently economic tool which has only recently assumed security implications. The timing and nature of the securitising process clearly suggests that the growth of China-originated investments played a fundamental role in triggering and shaping the process. However, the reasons behind the securitisation of FDI have received very marginal and limited analysed. Rooted in the theory of securitisation of non-traditional security issues (NTS), this article seeks to explain the reasons behind the recent securitisation of investments in the UK and spell out its relations with the Chinese origin of such investments.
Author: Francesca Ghiretti (King's College London) -
Managing the rise of China has become a dilemma for most governments from across the international system. Britain’s departure from the EU, if anything, is only making this conundrum worse for London. Not only Britain will be on the lookout for new partnerships, but it will have to take responsibilities for decisions previously shared with Brussels.
In order to unpack these issues, this paper takes the following steps. Firstly, drawing on Manuel Castells’s work, it frames the tension between space of (financial) flows and (political) place, arguing that the “China-factor” results from the “blowback” of US-led globalisation. Secondly, the paper argues that compared to other countries, post-Brexit Britain faces a more challenging scenario. Indeed, the economic-security fault lines have been complicated by several layers of complexity, such as the UK-US special relationship; the row over Xinjiang’s re-education camps; and the Hong Kong’s protests. Events in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, in particular, remind that economic and security interests are not the only factors at play, but that rule of law continues to be a crucial soft power device. This reveals a degree of resilience of British power in the century of geopolitical colossi.Author: Zeno Leoni (King's College London) -
"The election campaign of the current American President Donald J. Trump was characterised by the message of “Make America Great Again.” A reactionary foreign policy based on the belief that the United States has been unduly treated by its allies and competitors alike, most particularly in matters of free-riding on the US’ security provision (Brodie 2019). Meanwhile, the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Dream of Great Rejuvenation sees the country becoming a socialist great power under the aegis of the Chinese Communist Party by 2049. China’s confidence in this vision saw the country branded as a great-power competitor in the strategy documents of respectively the White House (Trump 2017) and the US Department of Defense (DoD 2018). This paper aims to move beyond the great-power binary of the US-China competition to consider the influence on middle powers that find themselves at the confluence of these two visions for the future. For Britain, and particularly in the isolated position that the country might find itself in a post-Brexit scenario, this question urgently needs answered. Its opposite, a Global Britain, asks similar question, which are essentially a reflection of the country’s economic and security interests."
Author: Axel Dessein (King's College London)
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Panel / Changing the dynamics of conflict in the Middle East Sandhill RoomSponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working GroupConvener: Jessica Northey (Coventry University)Chair: Jessica Northey (Coventry University)Discussant: Rana Aytug (Coventry University)
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What can sport tell us about contemporary Palestinian-Israeli relations? This research uses sport as a lens to analyse the politics of Palestine-Israel after the end of the Oslo era. As hopes of meaningful negotiations waned, the two parties have engaged in a struggle over what this research defines as the ‘normalisation of the status quo’. Israel has used high profile sport events to project the image of a modern and ‘normal’ country, one where the issues of the occupation and the relations with the Palestinians had been solved. Sport events on the other hand have provided a catalyst for Palestinians to contest the occupation. By looking at the case of the Giro d’Italia and of the football friendly match between Israel and Argentina, this research will use sport to provide a new understanding of the dynamics of Israeli-Palestinian relations.
Author: Francesco Belcastro (University of Derby) -
How do divergent interpretations of European identity impact the EU’s foreign policy? The EU’s identity is said to shape its character as a ‘normative actor’ promoting universal democratic values, including to its southern neighbourhood. Yet a competing civilizationist version of European identity is increasingly invoked on the radical right, and frames Europe as defined by ‘Judeo-Christian’ values and threatened by non-European cultures, especially Islam. Drawing on role theory, this paper argues that rising, radical civilizationist interpretations of European identity are undermining any normative consensus about Europe’s roles and responsibilities. These identity variations shape divergent responses to foreign policy challenges, and this can be seen through the impact on attitudes towards the Israeli-Palestinian arena. In Judeo-Christian civilizationist discourse, Israel is championed as the West’s bulwark against militant Islam, prompting broad support for Israeli government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian arena. The growing influence of civilizationist discourse on attitudes towards the Israeli-Palestinian arena are illustrated through a case study of Austria’s 2017-2019 ÖVP-FPÖ coalition, based on in-depth elite interviews. The FPÖ – motivated by anti-Islamic politics and a desire to detoxify from its anti-Semitic roots –adopted Judeo-Christian civilizationist discourse to reframe Jews and Israel as part of the European civilizational family, in opposition to Islam. This made possible a convergence with the ÖVP on this issue, and enabled a platform of unprecedented rhetorical and diplomatic support for the Netanyahu government. This further undermined the potential for unity among EU members in the Israeli-Palestinian arena.
Author: Toby Greene (Queen Mary University of London) -
The purpose of this paper is to provide insight on how young Palestinian women, aged 18 to 35, are engaged in resisting the Israeli Occupation, how they define political engagement, and the relation their definitions have with their resistance against the Israeli Occupation. This will be carried out by discussing the role of women in Palestine's goal for independence throughout history, the gender disparities women experience, current instances of dissent by Palestinian women, as well as interviews and surveys completed by Palestinian women, aged 18 to 35 living in the West Bank. Also discussed is the gap in definitions of political participation between the West and non-Western societies due to Eurocentric biases that are present in these definitions and how these definitions pertain to life in the West Bank for young Palestinian women. Findings from the surveys and interviews show that while Palestinian women face massive inequality from the Occupation they are not absent from the opposition to Israel, especially in their daily lives. It is in their daily lives that these women do the most acts of resistance, from posting on social media to dancing the Dabke. In this paper I also argue that going along with Edward Said's "Orientalism," political scientists are unable to use current definitions created in the West to describe political engagement in Palestine because these definitions do no create space for those living in the Global South, especially for those living under Occupation.
Author: Meredith Howe (University of New Hampshire Manchester)
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Roundtable / Curating Conflict: Political violence in Museums, Memorials, and Exhibitions History Room
Museums, memorials, and exhibitions are sites through which societies represent, enact, and curate conflict. As privileged sites for diplomatic visits, official state ceremonies, and international tourism, these sites provide salient arenas for (trans)national communication and public debate on military intervention, warfare, and terrorism, amongst other manifestations of violence and conflict. This roundtable will investigate this ‘new frontier’ in International Relations by bringing together researchers who combine empirical analysis with theoretical discussions on the political significance of the curation of conflict in artistic, educational, and commemorative institutions. We invite contributors to address the use of art-inspired methods in research on world politics; the (transnational) politics and economics of curation; the place of museums, galleries and memorials in economies of affect and emotion; relics and materiality, and the international political significance of the cultural realm. We invite authors to draw on rich traditions of work on museums, memorials, in exhibitions in other disciplines such as history of art, anthropology, sociology, and heritage and museum studies, and bring using these to challenge and revisit current understandings of violent conflict as it is known in IR. Conversely, bringing an IR lens to bear on the curation of conflict will positively contribute to overcome naïve or depoliticised accounts of such practices in other disciplines (Sylvester 2015, 4; Lisle 2016, 192–99).
Sponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working GroupChair: Shannon Brincat (University of the Sunshine Coast)Participants: Natasha Danilova (University of Aberdeen) , Charlotte Heath-Kelly (University of Warwick) , Audrey Reeves (Virginia Tech) , Christine Sylvester (University of Connecticut) , Kandida Purnell (Richmond University, London) , Henrique Furtado (University of West England (UWE)) -
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Panel / Emerging from conflict, building peace: exploring micro and macro approaches to peace in Africa Martin Luther KingSponsor: Africa and International Studies Working GroupConvener: Laura Routley (Newcastle)Chair: Róisín Read (University of Manchester)
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The menace of Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria remains a worrisome security threat in the country. However, the divergent tactics of the terrorist organisation has made the fight against the deadly group a difficult task for the Nigerian security apparatus. In fact, the security intelligence is yet to ascertain the dynamics of Boko Haram attacks in the country. In lieu of this, it becomes imperative in this study to examine the phenomenon of kidnapping as a tactics employed by the Boko Haram insurgent group. Series of kidnapping cases orchestrated by the sect ranging from Chibok secondary school girls in Borno State, Dapchi female students in Yobe states and many other notable ugly trend of hostilities testify to the new dimension of Boko Haram tactics. With the adoption of ‘State Failure Theory’ as theoretical postulation, the paper infers that Nigeria’s government is yet to fulfil its constitutional mandate on the provision of adequate security of citizens’ lives and properties. The study is a conceptual discourse that embraces qualitative research method in data collection and analysis. The findings of the study showcase the inability of military combatant alone to de-escalate the group attacks, and lack of viable intelligent approach slows down the fight against Boko Haram and kidnapping in Nigeria. The paper recommends that robust international collaboration would boost in cleansing Nigeria environments’ from Boko Haram penetration. This must be supported with proper synergy among the domestic security apparatus. The loggerhead and internal politicking within the national security outlets cannot enhance peace and unity in the country.
Author: Rauf Tunde Sakariyau (Nigeria Police Academy) -
Violent conflicts are mainly made visible due to the devastating effects they have on individuals and communities. Images of horrors and massacres against civilians, destruction of physical infrastructure, human displacement or large-scale rape, amongst others, are often the most noticeable elements that tend to call our attention. This portrayal of violence tends to assume – or, at the very least, focus specifically on – armed conflicts as spaces where there are only enemies who confront each other relentlessly, both physically and discursively. However, several war narratives and studies reveal situations of coexistence between different forces whilst in combat (Viaene, 2010; Balcells and Justino, 2014; Westendorf, 2015). This coexistence, often invisible in the mainstream of Peace and Conflict Studies, can be studied through micro-peace agreements in contexts of apparent intense violence. Using Mozambique as a case study and, in particular, fieldwork done in 2016-2018 in the Zambézia province, this article builds on the life stories of those who recently participated in combat operations, which includes both combatants and non-combatants. It aims to explore these invisible narratives, seeking to identify the role of micro-peace agreements within the peace process, and analyse how they can contribute to reconciliation and a bottom-up and more sustainable peacebuilding.
Authors: Ricardo Raboco (University of Licungo) , Teresa Almeida Cravo (FEUC-CES, University of Coimbra, Portugal) -
This paper analyses how peacebuilding has become militarised over the last decade. During this time, peacebuilding has increasingly focused on military peace enforcement and on building the military capacity of target states. The broad spectrum of goals and actors associated with the liberal peace agenda are narrowing down to those of a military nature. Scholars addressing this trend disagree about whether new developments entail the end of peacebuilding or its reproduction and have not provided enough theoretical and empirical backing to account for the processes, drivers and practical and structural implications of peacebuilding’s militarisation. This paper argues that we are witnessing the rise of a new paradigm that is displacing liberal with military peace. Drawing on the historical sociology of global militarism, its main premise is that what has changed is the social context in which the use of force takes place. The paper combines quantitative data with the study of the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is not by chance that Africa is being the target and cradle of this new paradigm, showing that this shift reproduces global relations of power and has implications for the governance of international order.
Author: Marta Iñiguez de Heredia (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) -
The police are considered the most visible arm of the government, responsible for law enforcement and establishing security and order for citizen (Cao and Zhao 2005). Yet especially after violent conflict the police are often not trusted (anymore): during war and political conflict, formal and capable security institutions are often destroyed, and in some cases the police are even perpetrators of violence against civilians themselves. Previous research on individual post-conflict countries has found that unlawful behaviour toward citizens has a negative effect on trust in police, while inclusive and accessible services have a positive effect. However, these findings have not been tested on a large scale, comparative, and cross-area sample. Taking survey data from eleven African and nine Latin American post-conflict countries, we examine factors that determine trust in police in these countries. We find that across different post-conflict countries in both continents, unlawful behaviour toward citizens is a very strong predictor of a lack of trust in police. In addition, we also find that general trust and satisfaction in other democratic institutions is also strongly correlated with trust in the police. Interestingly, factors such as insecurity in the neighbourhood do only determine trust in police in Latin American post-conflict countries, but not in African post-conflict countries. Accessibility of police services was not significant across all countries. Our findings make an important contribution to existing research on police and police reform in post-conflict countries, and give important indications for practitioners of police reform.
Authors: Nadine Ansorg (University of Kent) , Ana Maria Lobos (University of Kent )* -
The Horn of Africa has been known for the short supply of peace and stability throughout millennia. Recurred and protracted inter-empire, inter-ethnic, interstate, and intrastate conflicts have crippled not only the lives of the ordinary people but also the political and economic developments in the region. Religion, anti-imperialism, irredentism, secessionism, national borders, and mutual intervention were some of the igniting factors of the conflicts. Moreover, the persistent involvement of the superpowers siding with either of the warring parties has exacerbated the raging conflicts in the region. Many studies on the Horn conflicts have suggested a solution to different types of regional integration. However, neither of the proposed regional mechanisms had become active due to the nature of politics and society in the region. Recent reforms in Ethiopia’s leadership and its rapprochement with Eritrea restored the hope of peace in the region.
The trio cooperative initiative that the Ethiopian prime minister proposed to the leaders of Eritrea and Somalia has been labeled as a Cushitic alliance. Thus, it can be said that such regional initiative never experienced the region, and it needs to be examined further if such Cushitic integration could result in the sense of lasting peace in the region. Besides the Cushitic cooperation, this study seeks what each country can probably either gain or lose in the integration from its current political, societal, and economic dimension. Indeed, there are specific challenges ahead of such integration in the region as the previous ones. This paper attempts to highlight the possible national and regional impediments of this integration. The use of interviews and content analysis of some relevant texts, this study identifies that Cushitic cooperation can be an appropriate solution for the prolonged antipathy in the Horn of Africa. It is argued that the gains each country acquires from this cooperation outweigh the loses, particularly Somalia, which has been a battleground for the hostilities in the region for the last three decades.Author: Aweis Ahmed Mohamed (Ankara yildirim beyazit university) -
The revamped and revitalized East African Community (EAC) will welcome the year 2020 with a number of serious challenges that cry out for urgent strategic intervention. To begin with, peace and security is still the elephant in the room. On-going political chaos in Somalia, Burundi and South Sudan still hamper security and developmental aspirations in the region. The fact that there are overlapping mandates and competencies among the regional bodies such as the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the African Union (AU) not to mention the United Nations (UN) role in peace keeping has also served to murky the environment. For instance, the unfinished business regarding the implementation of the South Sudan peace agreement still fetters economic development in the region. Similarly, corruption (both economic and political) still bedevils member states as official bureaucracy remains mired in waste, fraud and abuse. The EAC therefore needs a major strategic rethink on how to enhance good governance and promote a vibrant liberal multiparty democracy underpinned by freedom of expression and association. The present paper sketches out a framework for a new-look EAC that is fit-for-purpose in the twenty first century.
Author: Collins Miruka (Catholic University of Eastern Africa)
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Panel / Feminism and Foreign Policy Thinking and Practice Pandon RoomSponsor: Gendering International Relations Working GroupConvener: Ali Bilgic (Loughborough University)Chair: Sorana Jude
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Five years after the launch of the first Feminist Foreign Policy agenda by the Swedish government, this paper takes stock of the development of the agenda in Sweden. While the overall project is concerned with locating key elements of the self-proclaimed feminist foreign policy agenda and placing them in conversation with the broader (emerging) literature on the topic, this paper focuses in particular on the developments during the two years (2017-18) when Sweden sat on the UN Security Council. Doing so, the paper is concerned with what happens when feminist foreign policy idea(l)s are put into practice - and what happens when its primary proponents (the Swedish Government, but also particularly its Feminist Foreign Minister, Margot Wallström) leave these spaces.
Author: Annick T.R. Wibben (Swedish Defence University) -
Drawing from the experiences of the student led resistance in New Delhi and other parts of India against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register for Citizens passed by the Government of India in 2019, this paper proposes to study the reaction of the academic IR community within the domains of foreign policy analysis. The often raised critique of sitting in the ivory towers of the discipline, this paper looks at the responses of the academic community at large and the foreign policy community in particular to resistance led by the young turks of its own creed and investigates the near apathy and the calculated silence and even ignorance on the same. The paper would involve a review of social media responses and newspaper articles to look at the immediate reaction of those with stable position within the discipline and to gauge the response of the disciplinary community on a whole. The questions that it hopes to investigate are; Does academia not care for student movements with no direct connection? Do student movements of the Global south fall behind in gaining visibility? What is and what isn’t the acceptable issue within the disciplinary community worthy of evoking a response and rage? Does the gender of the respondent determine the response to the issues of resistance? In the course the study dwells upon the question of responsibility that lays upon us as an academic community, to speak up when we can.
Author: Khushi Singh Rathore (Jawaharlal Nehru University) -
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This paper seeks to interrogate the racial, sexualised and gendered tropes at work in the British public and government’s reaction to Shamima Begum, following her discovery in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019. This came four years after she left the UK to join Islamic State in 2015, as a 15 year old schoolgirl. However, her discovery and plea to return to the UK was met with a fierce campaign of misogyny, racism and othering, popularised in the British press and culminating in the government revoking her British – and only – citizenship. In turn, this paper pays particular attention to how gendered Islamophobia, misogyny and hyper-sexualisation all informed the discourse and security practices directed towards Shamima Begum. However, this paper will also explore how such discourse and practice was made possible through producing Shamima as an “unsaveable Muslim woman”. It will show how the same neo-colonial politics of “saving Muslim women” that once justified Western interventions on behalf of Muslim women, is now ironically working to produce Shamima - a Muslim woman who as actually asked to be saved - as one not worthy of saving.Author: Rahima Siddique
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Panel / Glory/Trauma: Affective Investments in the National Past Council ChamberSponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working GroupConveners: Francesca Melhuish (University of Warwick) , Katie Dingley (University of Warwick)Chair: Gabriel Siles-Brügge (University of Warwick)
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Scholarship in Feminist sociology and IR has emphasised that late-modern social structures are hierarchically-ordered along gendered lines. This is particularly evident in the social distinctions drawn between military and sporting subjectivities. While it is common for societies to refer to both subjects and their ostensible service to the nation as heroic, discursive frameworks emphasise that sporting subjects and their heroisms are hierarchically-inferior to the ‘real heroes’: the figure of the liberal masculinised warrior. While such distinctions are not immutable, the conditions under which they might transmogrify remain underexplored. In this paper, I argue that moments of ontological insecurity are instances in which such distinctions might be temporarily suspended. Using the case of FIFA’s controversial refusal in 2016 to allow the English men’s football team to wear kits adorned with red Poppy emblems associated with British war commemoration, I argue that the episode gave expression to broader anxieties expressed in Britain’s decision to leave the European Union and reassert itself on the global stage, leading to media framings of the controversy as a metaphorical war, structured along the lines of a Lacanian fantasy. Focusing on the discursive and aesthetic aspects of press coverage, I argue that positioning England footballers as vicarious proxies for the nation in a ‘war’ with FIFA was enabled by the collapsing of distinctions of sporting and military hierarchies, with soldiers discursively positioned using militarised terminology usually reserved for military veterans, with broader implications for the integrity of ‘civilian’ and ‘military’ subjectivities.
Author: Joe Haigh (University of Warwick) -
Examining the July 7, 2005 London Bombing as an ontologically destabilising event for the British Muslim communities, this paper will examine the way in which British Muslim groups have constructed an identity in response to the development of the securitization process post 7/7. The paper argues that this securitization process relies on discourses and practices of Britishness whose racialized structures and roots lie in the Empire and historical narratives of Islam as the Other. As part of creating an identity in response to the securitization process the Empire has become a polysemic signifier to which different Muslim organisations relate themselves in order to create a new ontological security. This paper will draw on Caterina Kinvall’s work to examine how the concepts of ‘chosen trauma’ and ‘chosen glories’ can be used to contrast the ways in which different Muslim organisations resist or accept the securitization process. Drawing on the public discourse of Muslim organisations, this paper will further examine how the groups’ discursive strategies rely on these historical narratives to situate themselves as either citizens of the Empire, and therefore rooted within constructs of Britishness, or as victimised colonial subjects othered by discourses of ontological security centred in sanitised histories of imperial glory.
Author: Shahnaz Akhter (University of Warwick) -
In the 2012 Japanese general election, Abe Shinzo’s campaign focused on the ‘taking back’ of Japan not only from the Democratic Party of Japan but from the ‘grip of postwar history’, a consistent concern for Japanese conservatives. For such groups, “true” Japaneseness was lost in 1945, with contemporary productions and historical understandings of Japaneseness working to disrupt the national identity to which they are attached and pursue ontological security through. It is this attachment to and perceived loss of “true” Japaneseness that this paper will explore in the context of domestic contestations over Japanese national identity between conservatives and, as labelled by them, “anti-Japanese” Japanese. Starting from the point that conservative Japaneseness is grounded in narrations of virtuous masculinity, the paper will highlight how productions which challenge this virtuousness through the assignment of aggression and suffering disrupt the core of conservatives’ national identity, thus producing existential anxiety. That these have been written by other Japanese national subjects intensifies conservative concerns, which they have then sought to allay through weakening, removing, or making dangerous the production of “anti-Japanese” narratives.
Author: Katie Dingley (University of Warwick) -
This paper engages the relationship between Euroscepticism and expressions of Britishness. These tropes, which have long supported claims of Britain’s separateness from the continent, cause us to consider interrelated questions of nationalism, national identity and national image. (Conservative) Eurosceptic campaigns throughout history have adopted everyday symbols of British nationhood such as the Union Jack, and stereotypical imagery associated with monarchy, military and countryside. Yet whilst extant scholarship on Euroscepticism has drawn our attention to some of the temporal and spatial aspects of these efforts, scant consideration has been afforded to their aesthetic and affective qualities. Using a case study of the Vote Leave campaign during 2016’s EU referendum, this paper explores the role of ‘banal’ forms of nostalgia in the articulation of Eurosceptic Britishness. Drawing on documentary evidence, social media data and interviews with campaigners, the paper examines the affective significance of Vote Leave’s mobilisation of familiar national icons and institutions, such as the British flag, Churchill, the Second World War, and most notably, the NHS. In doing so, the paper illuminates the multi-layered relationship between everyday forms of nostalgia and narratives of stability and ‘crisis’. It also speaks to broader debates regarding the affective politics of (aesthetic) portrayals of the national past.
Author: Francesca Melhuish (University of Warwick) -
This paper explores the role of civil society in relation to the UK’s enactment of the Women, Peace and Security agenda. It takes into account the relative positioning of civil society in relation to the state, and focuses in particular on the micropolitics that constitute these relations. This paper builds on existing critiques of civil society, but theorises civil society in relation to the constitution of gendered and racialised sovereignty. It draws on a combination of interview data and public-facing advocacy documents. Situating civil society as both ‘humanitarians’ and ‘patronised feminists’, it explores the complex entanglements between state and civil society, tracing how WPS advocacy repertoires are being pursued in and through the state. By interrogating intimate encounters between differently positioned humanitarian subjects and the state, it proposes a typology of advocacy that is built around three loosely defined subject positions: the ‘critical friend’, the ‘shouty NGO’ and the ‘outsider’. This typology reveals a network of gendered and racialised hierarchies that reflect subject positionality, organisational ‘types’, and communicative acts. It argues first, that civil society is not a unitary actor, second, that it is not completely distinct from the state and, third, that it does not always hold the state to account. This exposes the complex afterlives of colonialism linked to the contemporary struggles of civil society who operate both against, and as part of, the imperial framework and neoliberal ideology of state power.
Author: Columba Achilleos-Sarll (University of Warwick)
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Panel / Grand Questions in Contemporary IR Theory: Legitimation, Order, and Recognition Daniel WoodSponsor: Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working GroupConvener: Kyle Grayson (BISA)Chair: Kyle Grayson (BISA)
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Legitimacy, or rather the practice of legitimation, is fundamental to crafting the space to govern. Legitimation infuses power with symbolic capital, fusing norms, institutions and material resource, rendering such power (ephemerally) authoritative. This of course does not just pertain to formalized political institutions but also to informal governing practices in everyday life by the ascendant ‘non-state’. This paper sets out a conceptual framework for understanding how non-state actors legitimate their authority to act within contemporary, ‘multiple’ configurations of governance in selected African contexts. Specifically, we bring key debates around the legitimation practices of non-governmental, non-for-profit organizations versus legitimation of for-profit companies (often ensconced in Corporate Social Responsibility [CSR]) into dialogue. We thus attend to legitimation’s inherent multiplicity, heightened further by Africa’s ‘mobilities’ (as elsewhere), whereby the constant inward and outward flows of ideas, people and things engender new symbolic and material assemblages (and assemblers) through which the legitimation of public authority is negotiated. New, or returning, actors in some African contexts such as Chinese interventions via ‘development’ or business philanthropy via CSR, open up new fronts of legitimation whereby shifting ideas collide, adapt, are appropriated or contested within multiple African realities via a multiplicity of makers.
Authors: Kathy Dodworth (University of Edinburgh) , Jana Honke (University of Bayreuth)* -
In this article, we develop a state-in-society approach to international status by placing an emphasis on individual perceptions of status. In doing so, we distinguish a country's status from its overall national power or capacity. We argue that a state's claim for higher international status needs to be matched by individual perceptions of higher status in order to be legitimate. This process of domestic legitimization in turn is a prerequisite for international recognition of the state's status. Our conceptualization of status therefore differs from the conventional understanding of the term as we take status as a per-capita variable instead of an aggregate variable at the national level. We illustrate the importance of our conceptualization of status with an application to international migration. We show that the flow of international migration is more of a function of return to nationality, which is an individual-level variable, rather than the overall material capability of the destination country. The overarching message of this article is that the recognition of the masses matters and is consequential for states' claims for higher status. Status claims matched and supported by individual recognitions of such claims are more likely to be more successful and sustainable in the long run.
Authors: Ce Liang (University of Cambridge) , Andrew Li (Central European University )* -
This paper examines the causes and potential consequences of the current crisis of the Liberal International Order (LIO) through an English School conceptual framework proposed by Buzan (2004). It first analyses the normative claims made by liberal scholars and policymakers within the Western core of that LIO on the beneficial workings of liberally defined primary institutions in International Society; in particular, it examines these institutions’ expected interactions and their intended effects. These normative claims are subsequently critically assessed through an empirical mapping of these primary institutions since the end of the Cold War, and their relative grounding in the binding forces of belief, calculation, and coercion. It is argued that much of the crisis of the Liberal World Order is based on a disjuncture between liberal normative claims and empirical realities: the internally contradictory workings of these institutions, their unexpected effects in the inter-human domain, and changing material conditions have led to a weakening of the binding forces of belief and calculation (especially within the Western core), while shifts in the global distribution of power have made the upholding of the liberal order based on coercion less feasible. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the relative likelihood and consequences of a matrix of four possible future scenarios based on the survival or disintegration of the Western liberal core, and the maintenance or rejection of the cosmopolitan, universalist normativity that has characterized its approach to international society to date.
Author: Kevork Oskanian (University of Birmingham) -
The paper will examine the different forms of transnational recognition occurring in the Libyan civil war(s) since 2011. It is based on a non-dualistic and non-legal conceptualisation of transnational recognition drawing on Hegelian-inspired recognition theory. This provides a new angle to approach the transnational dimensions of civil war in primarily social-relational terms, besides domestic security dilemmas and political economy factors. From such point of view, there exist social and relational forms of recognition that result from a domestic actor’s accumulation of transnational engagements and interactions, without necessarily ever crossing a specific threshold or benchmark, or obtaining a legal stamp. Also, as a matter of fact and irrespective of intent, ‘engagement without recognition’ (Ker-Lindsay 2015) is never absolutely possible. That is even truer in situations of civil war where, conspicuously, ‘a catch-22 of sorts exists between the prevailing legal interpretation and practice’ concerning the rebels’ formal diplomatic status (Coggins 2015). Based on interviews with diplomats and international officials appointed to Libya, the paper will propose a typology of the causal mechanisms driving transnational recognition, e.g. framing, normative persuasion, strategic calculation and logics of on-the-ground practicality. This will be followed by a discussion of the international community’s dilemmas in recognising and engaging with Libyan political actors (dual recognition, coherence vs. inclusivity), economic/energy actors (only area of relative consistency around single authority), hybrid security actors (dual recognition at institutional level, ad hoc engagement in practice) and migration actors (humanitarian engagement vs. withdrawal).
Author: Irene Fernandez-Molina (University of Exeter)
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Panel / How to rethink traditional topics? gathering methods and strategies Swan RoomSponsor: International Relations as a Social Science Working GroupConvener: IRSS Working groupChair: Alexander Stoffel (Queen Mary University of London)Discussant: Audrey Alejandro (London School of Economics and Political Science)
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Global norms in academia are often defined, following Finnemore and Sikkink (1998), as internationally ´shared ideas, expectations and beliefs about appropriate behaviour what gives the world structure, order and stability’. In such aspirational interpretation, Western epistemological origins of the universal (as opposed to particularity, which is associated with non-West) go unquestioned. The global norms literature includes little empirical engagement with non-Western perspectives on power relations, historical circumstances and social relations that constitute both the “international” and “norms” (Acharya 2014, Dunford 2017). The monopoly over deciding what is international and global tends to go unquestioned as we fail to scrutinise the origins and availability of “normative capital” for different international actors in our analysis (Jabri 2017). Teleological imaginaries and logics of progress, development and modernity, while contested, continue to inform analysis. The epistemological limitations of IR and IS language and concepts, embedded in Western logic and political thought, hinder fruitful listening and interrogation of the voices from the geo-political South. At the same time, “Southern” scholars are silenced because their arguments are not being “indigenous”, “authentic” or “radical” enough to set them apart from their “Northern” peers (see Fonseca 2019). Consequently, in addition to epistemological reflection, there is a practical need to develop methodological and theoretical toolboxes to equip scholars for decolonising their research design.
This paper suggests that “decolonising strategies” are crucial for critical and forward thinking international studies research. In particular, I will consider the potential of thinking in terms of dialogue and multiple subject positions in global norms research. Following Schatz (2009), the paper explores the extent to which political ethnography can : 1) flesh out and question generalisations and meanings introduced by other research traditions 2) increase empirical soundness that contributes to theoretical vibrancy 3) boost epistemological innovation 4) rethink normative grounding to the study of politics (Schatz 2009: 10-11). As political ethnography allows for multi-method research design and expands the concept of immersion to reach beyond participant observation, it offers strategies to capture the entangled subject positions that constellate “global” and “international” politics. Furthermore, it is the ethnographic approach, the urge to step into our interlocutors shoes, and take a glance at the world through their eyes, that will provide rich and meaningful perspectives from the political subaltern as much as the elites.
Notwithstanding the need to engage with “indigenous knowledge” as well as to pursue methodological and theoretical innovation, I maintain that abandoning well established fields of research is unrealistic and will not necessarily take us closer to multi-faceted knowledge acquisition. In this paper I will zoom in on the research on global norms to suggest that political ethnography could provide a lens and a toolkit, which when used with intention, may facilitate new and inclusive modes of researching global governance and its discontents.Author: Karmen Tornius (Roskilde University / Danish Institute for International Studies) -
Over the past forty years, IR scholarship has seen concerted efforts to question the rigidity of ‘traditional’ definitions of sovereignty as bound to the internal ‘rationalities’ of centralised state governance. Extensive critical research has drawn attention to the political effects of definitions that posit neat boundaries between intra/inter-state politics, and which have failed to adequately account for the multiplicity of actors, identities and subjectivities that sit at the interstices of such rigid imaginaries of sovereign power.
An area that has received surprisingly little attention in recent attempts to unpack the prevalence of the sovereignty ‘myth’ has been minority nationalisms. These continue to invoke sovereignty as a central political objective and right in struggles for statehood and self-determination. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Sardinia, this paper contributes to ongoing efforts to problematize the sovereign-state ideal through an analysis of ethnographic notes and semi-structured interviews conducted with Sardinian ‘independentists’. Contrary to pervasive depictions in IR of nationalisms as cohesive movements that reproduce traditional definitions of sovereignty, Sardinian activist accounts suggest that minority nationalists do not simply reproduce the binary logic implicit in depictions of the term as necessarily state bound. Using Cynthia Weber’s formulation of the ‘and/or logic’, the paper argues that Sardinian activists’ conceptualisations point to a much more nuanced understanding of sovereignty as a way of doing politics. The paper adopts a Gramscian approach to firstly, situate the term’s use in struggles for political hegemony; and secondly, to highlight the extent to which sovereignty reflects both diverging and converging conceptualisations as a means through which activists can carve out spaces for political manoeuvre and express a unifying critique of Sardinia’s place in the world.
Author: Daniela Morgan (Newcastle University) -
Critical approaches to IR have often been criticized for lacking methodological rigor. (Aradau & Huysmans 2014) Especially, authors informed by the works of Michel Foucault have faced challenges to justify their methodology, given that Foucault did not provide scholars with a methodological blueprint. This article argues that Carol Bacchi´s ´What´s the problem represented to be?´ (WPR) approach, provides a robust critical methodology for policy analysis. WPR is a method that facilitates the critical examination of public policies to analyze ‘how the “problem” is represented within them and to subject this problem representation to critical scrutiny’. (Bacchi, 2012) This way of questioning differs from other forms of policy analysis in that it ‘shifts the focus of analysis from policy as a “problem solving” exercise, a technical, neutral and responsive process, to a mode of thinking that sees policy as an act which is constructive of “problems”’ (Marshall 2012). Policies are therefore not analyzed from a problem-solving perspective, but from a problem-questioning perspective. By making the ‘problem’ itself the focus of analysis, it becomes possible to uncover the political, epistemological and historical contexts which are constitutive of the problem representation. I demonstrate the value of this approach by subjecting the Cure Violence (CV) NGO to a WPR analysis. CV argues that ‘violence is a disease’ that can be cured via epidemiological methods used in disease control. A WPR analysis of CV’s ‘violence as disease’ narrative shows how its medicalization of violence is tied to a neoliberal rationality of governing that disentangles violence from structural factors and explains violence solely by reference to individual pathology. In doing so, CV produces new identities based on assumptions concerning biological infection or immunity resistance, which, as its visual language shows, are grounded in race. Through a politics of exclusion, CV turns these ‘at risk’ identities into appropriate targets for health intervention, with the aim of encouraging these to act upon themselves to improve or restore their productive capacities in order to achieve the idealized form of healthy citizenship that CV propagates. The paper will conclude with recommendation for the application of WPR in IR.
Author: Malte Riemann (Royal Military Academy Sandhurst) -
Abstract: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) offers a unique field for the research of modernity, a fundamental question in IR theory. When confronted with the UAE, a paradox emerges: whilst the country has, during the last years, reified traditions through practices that Hobsbawm and Ranger called invented traditions, it has also insisted on the moral and political importance of their “passage” from tradition to modernity, embedded in a teleological narrative (in the words of their Crown Prince, “a patriotic spirit to pursue the drive towards development and modernisation that knows no limits”).
The purpose of this paper is twofold. Based on our ethnographic research in Abu Dhabi, we first rethink Hobsbawm and Ranger’s concept of the “invention of tradition”, to show how an invented tradition can be mobilised in favour of political legitimacy not only through continuity but also as a discontinuity with the past. Secondly, by analysing the case of the UAE through the heuristic of (dis)continuity, we contend the dominant idea in disciplinary IR that holds that modernity can only be performed vis-à-vis a traditional Other. These two moves, in turn, allow us to account for the “Emirati Paradox”, and to shed some light into the opposition tradition/modernity.
Authors: Bernardino Leon Reyes (Sciences Po) , Javier Carbonell (University of Edinburgh)
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Panel / New Norms and Practices of Civilian Protection Collingwood RoomSponsor: Intervention and Responsibility to Protect Working GroupConvener: IR2P Working groupChair: Pinar Gozen Ercan (Hacettepe University)Discussant: Alex Leveringhaus (University of Surrey)
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In a 2003 article, Judith Butler examines human experiences of corporeal vulnerability in light of the empathy and insight into the vulnerability of others that might be gained from such experiences. Drawing on her assertion of the need to attend to vulnerability as a resource ‘from which we must take our bearings and find our way’ (Butler, 2003, p. 19), this paper undertakes an analysis of vulnerability as it appears within UN reports and resolutions related to interventions for protection purposes. In doing so, it questions the ways in which these texts frame vulnerability as a characteristic belonging to feminised ‘others’, reproducing a gendered dichotomy between the assumed capability and expertise of international actors and the assumed helplessness of ‘vulnerable’ local civilians—frequently imagined within these texts as ‘women and children’. I argue that this displacement of vulnerability onto others, while serving a purpose in shoring up the masculinised authority of UN actors and the institution itself, risks reproducing gendered power imbalances and excluding forms of knowledge that might be gained from attention to gendered experiences of vulnerability. This in turn limits the potential for UN actors to intervene effectively in the midst of multiple vulnerabilities—both their own and those of others.
Butler, J. 2003. Violence, mourning, politics. Studies in Gender and Sexuality. 4(1), pp. 9–37.
Author: Shannon Mathieu (University of Warwick) -
Since the foundation of international relations as a discipline, state-level of analysis occupied a dominant place in theoretical and practical spheres. Even though there is a considerable evolution of norms of human rights, individual level is still disregarded, both concerning the roles of non-state actors and the protection of human rights. One of the signs of this argument is that, around the world, civilian people are still facing massive human rights abuses and even mass killings by their own government. And unfortunately, they are not protected by the human rights regime, as these are states that have to implement them. When it comes to help those people by an intervention, the debates become even more frustrating because of debates around the state sovereignty principle and non-intervention into domestic affairs.
The R2P could have been considered as the most successful achievement of the international society but the facts and the cases show that it is not totally the case. Considering the state of world politics, for the international relations discipline to become a guideline for a peaceful world, the study of ethics seems to be primordial. For the international society to take responsibility in preventing atrocity and ending of it, ethical and normative considerations should be put forward overall discussions. If international relations scholars and practitioners would be focused on the ethical side of preventing and ending mass atrocity crimes, the establishment of normative framework and the decision to take action against those would have become possible.Author: Aslihan Turan Zara (University of Birmingham) -
The doctrine of the responsibility to protect has been expanded on since its adoption in 2005. In 2009, Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s report outlined a three-pillar strategy to implementing the responsibility to protect. This approach also gave the responsibility to protect doctrine its global remit, ensuring that R2P applies to every state at every time. Yet, in spite of the global remit, the contribution of corporate institutions to addressing egregious human right abuses has not been explored in R2P reports and scholarly works on the doctrine. This paper will argue that this is a significant oversight. It will argue that there is a need to move beyond the state-centric approach which has repeatedly failed to prevent and react to the commission of atrocity crimes. It will draw examples from the Kimberley Process and the reaction of corporate institutions to Jamal Khashoggi’s gruesome murder in 2018 to show the potential of a corporate responsibility to protect.
Author: Bola Adediran (University of the West of England) -
‘Zonation’ is a practice frequently suggested and used for conflict management, especially in the context of large-scale human rights abuses. Research on this topic spans into military intervention, political geography, and foreign policy decision-making. What is often ignored, however, is how similar different such ‘zones’ are, whether naval zones, safe havens/safe areas, no-fly zones or buffer zones. Based on case studies from Bosnia, Libya and Syria, I suggest that these tools share crucial characteristics: for one, they are all used to control clearly demarcated theaters (“zones”) in conflict regions. However, I argue that zonation addresses the interests of conflict managers (including political and military decision-makers) in ordering and governing seemingly chaotic or “unruly” environments from afar with sufficiently flexible and cheap means, rather than those of to-be-protected populations. Although the resulting imposition of zones does have concrete consequences – e.g. walls, fences, checkpoints, different rules of engagement, and so forth -, order resulting from zonation is often simulated and superficial rather than effectual. This is because it neglects the realities of conflictual dynamics, hierarchies of control and even geography on the ground. Finally, I map out ways in which conceptualizing zonation can contribute to better decision-making about conflict management.
Author: Gustav Meibauer (London School of Economics)
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Panel / Once More into the Breach: Reading, Writing, and Performing War Bewick RoomSponsor: Ethics and World Politics Working GroupConvener: Cian O'Driscoll (University of Glasgow)Chair: Ty Solomon (University of Glasgow)Discussant: Rachel Woodward (Newcastle University)
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Prior to the formal policy consultations between NATO and civil society on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) in June 2014, NATO was a notable exception among international organisations in having no mechanisms in place to consult civil society in the policy making process. Moreover, civil society actors, in particular feminist organisations engaged with WPS, have long been wary of engagement with NATO. This is unsurprising given a number are pacifist organisations whose outlook runs directly counter to NATO’s militarism. This project draws on elite interviews with NATO and civil society practioners, as well as content analysis of key policy documents and speech acts, to interrogate the apparent sudden change and its implications for security. It will consider what accounts for this shift, why civil society actors have decided to engage and how (if at all) this experience has changed NATO-civil society mutual perceptions.
Author: Katharine A.M. Wright (Newcastle University) -
Following the 2004 establishment of the World War II memorial in Washington DC, itself a product of the collective re-commemoration of the so-called ‘Greatest Generation’ of WWII veterans in the US, nonprofits began the practice of ‘Honor flights’. These flights transport US veterans of the Second World War to Washington DC to visit the memorial and other memorials, meet with Congressional members, and return to their local airports to great fanfare and celebration.
The practice has evolved to incorporate Korean War and now Vietnam War veterans. As honor flights include much more than the veterans themselves, and as it has become an affectively-charged festival for local communities to ‘honor’ their veterans during a period of unresolved wartime, I articulate the Honor Flight as both a treatment for but also a symptom of US ontological insecurity in the 21st Century. It is a practice that is celebratory, but also involves a broader politics of exclusion and erasure. As it moves from the veterans as subjects to the veterans as objects, as it moves from the presentation of the veterans to the honor flight’s re- presentation by local media, bystanders, and viewers, honor flights implicate and involve more than just the veterans themselves.Author: Brent J. Steele (University of Utah) -
How do agents in war speak to the ethics of war in the absence of the formal just war framework? Is it possible, in other words, to trace a vernacular just war? This question builds upon but pushes against Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars. Walzer’s work was radical because it started with memoirs of participants in war as opposed to the just war canon. Ultimately Just and Unjust Wars is unsatisfactory, though. It imposes a just war political theory from above rather than letting the reflections of agents in war speak for themselves. This paper takes the latter as its point of departure. It explores how notions of masculinity appear in war memoirs and whether this substitutes for the absence of the formal just war framework. Through an analysis of different generations of war fighting memoirs, the paper reflects on how masculinity is reconstituted and what relationship this has to the ethics of war in the vernacular.
Author: Keith Smith (Kings College London) -
This paper explores the (re)scripting and performance of war in public through investigation of of the spaces occupied, relationships forged, and performances staged by the British Army in collaboration with Artists towards the development, launch, and staging of the 2017, 2018, and 2019 Army@Fringe programmes occurring within the annual Edinburgh Festivals. Sponsored by the British Army in Scotland as a means to close the ‘civil-military gap’, ‘facilitate conversations about war, conflict and the role of the British Army in the modern world’, and devised in cooperation with Edinburgh Fringe Festival Art Managers, Army@Fringe emerges as a crucial site for negotiating and staging the performance of embodied – gendered, sexualized, and racialized – experiences and memoirs of war. Drawing on extensive fieldwork ethnographies and interviews conducted throughout the 2017 and 2018 Festivals with key stakeholders including Army personnel, artists, audiences, and Edinburgh Fringe Festival venue programmers , in this paper we posit that despite the official self-representation of Army@Fringe as a platform for military-civilian dialogue and the Army’s self-positioning as an inclusive, multicultural, and ‘compassionate’ institution, a combination of mechanisms of 1) Army/Artist co-optation, self-policing, and co-performance and 2) a structuring frame of Military Family – Familiar Military work to reinforce existing hierarchies within the British Army and beyond into civil society contributing to the ongoing naturalization of soldiering and militarism instead of opening up spaces for civil-military dialogue and debate.
Authors: Kandida Purnell (Richmond, the American University in London) , Natasha Danilova (University of Aberdeen)* , Emma Dolan (University of Aberdeen)* -
Scholars interested in just war theory have paid insufficient attention to how those men and women who are tasked to carry out its demands, i.e., soldiers, think and talk about it. While one might stop short of arguing that only those who have had their ass shot off in a trench are qualified to talk about the merits (or lack thereof) of just war theory, it is hard to see the field’s disinterest in the soldierly perspective as anything other than perverse. This essay took some tentative steps toward addressing this gap. Focusing on eight of the better-known war memoirs written by British and American soldiers who had experienced combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, it examines how just war theory is treated in these texts. It identifies two patterns. On the one hand, most war memoirs contain some formal discussion of just war theory and/or the rules of engagement that it underpins. These discussions are usually quite positive. Soldier-authors radiate pride when recalling how their own actions and the actions of their comrades conformed with just war theory, and express regret at those occasions they did not. On the other hand, a a much more cynical attitude toward just war theory can be discerned in other passages of these texts, passages wherein just war theory is not being formally discussed — passages that involve laughter. What one finds disclosed in these passages is a repressed, seething anger toward just war theory. The very notion of just war is presented in these moments as part of a cruel cosmic joke that is carried on at the expense of the soldiers charged with waging it. This paper asks what this tells us about just war.
Authors: Cian O'Driscoll (Australia National University) , Liane Hartnett (University of Glasgow)*
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Panel / Provincializing Social Sciences from SEE: Theories, approaches, and methods for the future Dobson RoomSponsor: South East Europe Working GroupConvener: Katarina Kušić (Aberystwyth University)Chair: Lydia Cole (University of Durham)Discussant: Maria-Adriana Deiana (Queen’s University Belfast)
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This paper contributes to ongoing discussions on methodological (im)possibilities of scholarship that takes as its starting point the life stories of people usually excluded from IR theorisation. Drawing from ethnographic research on spaces of statebuilding interventions in Serbia, the paper highlights a particular tension between representation and deconstruction that is not widely discussed in conversations surrounding decolonial methodologies. Any attempt to recover subjecthoods lost under the weight of Eurocentric frameworks must be aware of the tensions between standpoint epistemology that valorises ‘one’s terms’ and the critical endeavour of unpacking the constituted nature of those terms. Aware of the impossibilities of any methodological recipe to resolve this issue, the paper suggest a careful rethinking of scale as a way forward: by highlighting how different iterations of scalar thinking shape knowledge production about Southeast Europe, the paper argues that staying attuned to scales of our thinking can help make political and strategic choices in the research process.
Author: Katarina Kušić (Aberystwyth University) -
The paper intends to contribute to vibrant debates on knowledge production in IR from a methodological point of view, by reimagining the notion and use of comparisons. Studies of the ‘international’ and its disciplinary construction into International Relations have long relied on methodological frameworks derived from a positivist tradition interested in asserting ‘objective’ and ‘universal’ knowledge claims. While debates on the uses of methods, ethics and fieldwork have flourished over the past years especially thanks to the contributions of critical feminist and de-colonial scholars, this paper focuses on the less explored issue of use of the comparative method. We argue that established, conventional approaches to comparative research are not only epistemologically problematic for critical scholars who reject the logic of control, replicability and positivist conceptions of causality: they have also supported the Eurocentrism of IR by giving the illusion that comparisons lead to generalisable forms of knowledge, while at the same time fostering methodological nationalism, setting the limits of what constitutes a case, and what kind of cases can be productively compared in such a way as to produce this generalisable knowledge. The paper explores alternatives to the dominant comparative method based on the role of discourse, space and time, which can potentially disrupt the power relations and hierarchies reproduced in mainstream methodologies in IR.
Authors: Lai Daniela (London South Bank University) , Roberto Roccu (King’s College London)* -
The breakup of the former Yugoslavia and the post-war realities have been the focus of a vast amount of literature in International Relations, a small part of which has reflected how researchers’ positionality affects knowledge production. This paper examines the dynamics of knowledge production and cultivation on and in the post-Yugoslav region by analysing the positionality of six female scholars from and of the region. We examine expectations that exist both ‘in the field’ and in Global North academia and the associated emotional labour that comes with (justifying) researching a region where one has an assumed personal stake. We focus on the role of gender, age, ethnicity, class, and related assumptions of research participants and scholars, contributing to the literature on positionality, reflexivity, and decoloniality in IR. The article shows how debates about postcolonialism are complicated by ‘the Balkans’ as a subject of inquiry, and as Europe’s imagined periphery.
Authors: Dženeta Karabegović (University of Salzburg)* , Sladjana Lazic (University of Tromso)* , Vjosa Musliu (University of Gent)* , Julija Sardelić (Victoria University of Wellington)* , Elena B. Stavrevska (London School of Economics and Political Science) , Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik (Aston University ) -
In the past years, history of knowledge has established itself as an academic field in its own right (Daston 2017, Sarasin 2011). Yet what can a knowledge-historical approach contribute to the study of international politics? On the one hand, knowledge-historical analyses of international politics would broaden the range of questions asked about knowledge’s history within Historical International Relations (HIR): they would shift the focus from the (meta-) theoretical and disciplinary developments of interest to HIR approaches such as intellectual history and history of science towards the concrete institutions, practices, relations and exclusions of knowledge in international politics. On the other hand, a genealogically understood history of knowledge would enable a critique of our IR ways of knowing that, rather than contenting itself with the deconstruction of these ways, would produce historical materials for their experimental reconstruction. The paper develops these arguments through an analysis of the work of the so-called “Balkan Commission” (ca. 1912-14). Initiated and financed by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), the commission inquired into atrocities committed by the parties to the two Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. Based on primary sources collected from the CEIP’s archive, the paper discusses the institutional form of the commission, the practices of looking and of writing developed by the commissioners, and the hierarchical social relations between the commissioners and their interlocutors in the Balkan states as well as in Western Europe and the United States.
Author: Christine Andrä (Aberystwyth University)
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Panel / The Future of Human Rights: New Challenges in a Changing World Stephenson RoomSponsor: International Law and Politics Working GroupConvener: Lorenza Fontana (Newcastle University)Chair: Jean Grugel (University of York)
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There is agreement that the human rights agenda has undergone significant expansion; yet challenges of delivery remain acute. Whilst women’s sexual and reproductive rights (SRHR) are not a ‘new’ issue, moving their health rights up and delivering them, especially in the global South, have been difficult. Currently, pressure on governments to take these rights more seriously are increasing, however. This paper explores the shift to Universal Health Coverage (UHC), as an avenue for improved delivery of reproductive health rights, focusing on the agency of women’s advocacy groups. It does so in the case of the Southern African region. Southern Africa is particularly important for understanding the relationship between SRHR, UHC and gender, with a majority of women severely deprived of SRHR and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) reporting that the region is unlikely to achieve UHC by 2030 if these underlying SRHR issues remain unaddressed. This paper draws on the Thanzi la Onse (Health for all) programme of GCRF-funded research (https://thanzi.org/; https://www.york.ac.uk/igdc/research/thanzi-la-onse/
Authors: Lilian Chigona (University of York) , Peg Murray-Evans (University of York)* , Jean Grugel (University of York) -
Social accountability for development governance is now widely acknowledged as significant for international development research and practice. But, how can a human rights-based approach to accountability be meaningful to the enhancement of the right to health and social inclusion of the most marginalised in society? This paper turns the attention to what we identify as a performance gap in terms of what the right to health as a normative framework and national policy encourages states to do and institutional arrangements and power relations that underpin everyday practices affecting the lived experience of the right to health by citizens. The performance gap suggests that despite availability of health services, the way they are discharged generates negative relations between citizens/community and the services if these are of substandard quality, inaccessible or without due respect. We explore this in Brazil despite existing legal specificity, the fulfilment of the right to health is contingent on eliminating structural and cultural barriers that affect individual dignity and the enjoyment of rights of disadvantaged social groups in society, particularly women in rural, poor settings. We argue that the tensions between provision of health services and the ground of the duty (dignity of a person) limit SDGs on health and gender equality and thus we call for a more meaningful discussion about rights-based accountability for inclusive development.
Author: Pia Riggirozzi (University of Southampton ) -
The recent revolution in digital technology has not only created new opportunities for advancing human rights, especially in relation to grassroot politics and political activism, but it has also created significant challenges. Digital technologies, particularly social media, have become pivotal avenues for connecting people across borders, regardless of differences related to colour, nationality, religion, class or economic status. At the same time, social media has also become an arena of inflicting or inciting violence. These online narratives of violence pose significant challenges to state sovereignty and control, especially as they dictate and impact offline dynamics of violence. Vulnerable users of social media can easily fall prey to abuse, exploitation, cybercrime, including cybersex crimes, cyberbullying, cyber hate crimes, including hate speech directly inflicting or inciting violence, as well as trafficking. Governments across borders are challenged by the transnational nature of cyberviolence and are therefore frequently debating and adapting their policies to respond to the ever-changing challenges of the ‘digital’. This paper examines the challenges of digital technology to human rights, especially in relation to violence on social media networks. In doing so, it examines the nature and extent of cyberviolence in relation to existing human rights norms and state responsibility.
Author: Dina Mansour-Ille (ODI) -
The UK’s departure from the EU raises basic questions about its position in the world. One area that has thus far been overlooked is what Brexit means for the UK’s ability to promote compliance with international human rights norms through various diplomatic channels. The salience of effective human rights diplomacy is particularly pertinent in light of wider and seismic geopolitical changes currently underway. Economic and political power is shifting from North and West to South and East; liberal democracies increasingly share or cede global power to authoritarian regimes or emerging powers that alternative ideas, values systems and norms, which run contrary to those espoused under the international human rights project. This paper considers the implications of these shifts on the UK human rights diplomacy not only in a ‘changing Europe’ but also in this context of altering international geopolitical dynamics. Drawing on an initial pilot study on the UK and the EUs approach to human rights diplomacy at the Human Rights Council, it considers a number of channels through which the UK will or could adapt its approach to human rights diplomacy in order to respond to the current challenges that Brexit and these broader geopolitical shifts pose.
Authors: Sean Molloy (Newcastle University) , Rhona Smith (Newcastle University ) , Conall Mallory (Newcastle University ) -
Across Latin America, indigenous peoples inhabit areas that are often environmentally protected and extraordinarily rich in terms of biodiversity and both renewable and non-renewable resources. In recent years, these areas have acquired new strategic value in the framework of political economic models that increasingly rely on commodity exploitation to sustain economic growth and welfare investments. This has resulted in growing pressures and drastic changes on local communities, which have often fuelled new social tensions. In this context, the need for new rights and participatory spaces became a priority as mechanisms called Free Prior and Informed Consent/Consultation (FPIC) - regulated by the International Labour Organization’s Convention 169 - suddently catalized the attention of both governements and social movements. This paper offers a comparative analysis of the national debates that led to the regulation of FPIC in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. It discusses how the three countries have offered quite different models of consultation, with important implications in terms of inclusion and exclusion of considerable parts of the rural population from new human rights mechanisms. These models also reflect the ideals of citizenship and democracy that these countries are committed to build though the redefinition of social boundaries and collective identities.
Author: Lorenza Fontana (Newcastle University)
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Panel / The Revenge of Tocqueville. The resurgence of individual local politics and membership organising at the expense of apolitical and professional INGOs CarilolSponsor: Non-Governmental Organisations Working GroupConvener: Angela CrackChair: Angela CrackDiscussant: Angela Crack
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As global governance regimes grow and become a more invasive authority in domestic policy processes, and in normative deliberations on global issues at the domestic level, questions about their political legitimacy have become increasingly important. In their call for a third generation of global governance research Coen and Pegram (2018) place such boundary conflicts of transnational authority as one of the key future topics in IR scholarship, including identifying better what constitutes global in global governance. As Zurn argues (2018) the lack of clarity in how to arrange, or prioritize, transboundary criteria of highly fragmented authority systems (e.g. between the local and the global) where multiple actors are involved in the governance of a complex global issue, is throwing up very difficult legitimacy questions. This is especially true where global governance regimes have expanded their reach and power to create opportunity structures for INGOs to mobilise within such governance regimes to influence policy processes (Dellmuth and Tallberg 2018; Haddid 2018). Under the aegis of international institutions INGOs have evolved into a significant global authority, yet, at the same time little attention has been paid to what states as domestic political authorities think of this power expansion of INGOs as a global political authority, including when said authority is located outside of typical IO state-led structures. Not all states are viewing this development as a positive phenomenon, and many are pushing back with the aim to place effective limits on INGOs’ power (Thrandardottir and Mitra, forthcoming). At the centre of the concerns raised by states about the power of INGOs as global actors is a rhetoric that depicts INGOs as ‘foreign funded’, ‘anti-national’, and a threat to national security.
Our research project is a case study of this type of transboundary conflicts in Hungary and India. We explore how they responded to a perceived infringement by INGOs upon state sovereignty. We explore how this transboundary conflict took place through the prism of a socio-political legal case study comparing the Indian Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) 2010; and the 2017 Hungarian Act on the Transparency of Organisations Supported from Abroad (TOSA), often dubbed the ‘Stop Soros’ law. The aim is to identify the characteristics of this emerging paradigm in INGO regulation and what conditions these may impose on INGOs’ legitimacy as global actors. The tentative argument in our draft is that using domestic legislation to hedge against INGOs as a global authority can have a detrimental effect on global civil society as a whole because it has the potential to erode the principles underpinning their threshold legitimacy as set out in e.g. articles 19 and 20 of the UDHR and other international instruments on freedom of expression and association.Authors: Erla Thrandardottir (University of Manchester ) , Antal Berkes (University of Pretoria, South Africa )* , Susanna Mitra (Ramaiah Public Policy Centre, Bangalore, India )* -
In February 2018, The Times published a news story of sexual misconduct, bullying and harassment by Oxfam aid workers in 2011 in Haiti as part of the humanitarian relief effort following the 2010 catastrophic earthquake. The shocking exposés of Oxfam employees’ conduct during the relief effort; subsequent revelations of other such episodes; and prior longstanding concerns suggest that unfortunately there is an industry-wide problem and one particularly deep seated in aid abroad.
As a study in its infant stage, drawing on theories related to ethics and postcolonialism and an understanding of the spaces in which these aid efforts occur, we query why such exploitative activities take place within vulnerable communities. The lines of inquiry we pursue here include the power relationships between vulnerable communities and organisations offering aid; and the meanings of ethics and values ‘at home’ and in foreign lands. The research undertakes a discursive analysis of the unfolding of the Oxfam case to problematise the amoral behaviours of senior members of staff; the lack of adequate funding and safeguards to protect beneficiary communities; and management’s subsequent actions to privilege protecting Oxfam’s reputation at the cost of appropriate accountability, ethics and due care organisations owe their beneficiary communities.Authors: Dhanani Alpa (Cardiff University) , Nina Sharma (Cardiff University)* -
International aid is increasingly the domain of professionals, particularly among large international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs). For practitioners and academics alike, amateur aid is, at best, considered outdated (and largely ignored) and, at worst, blamed for high-profile failings in humanitarian response. Despite these perceptions, strong countervailing trends exist. In the United States, amateur, private, and voluntary development aid is on the rise with 10,000 grassroots INGOs (GINGOs) established since the early 1990s. This phenomenon remains largely unexplored in academic research. We ask: What is the place for amateur activism in a professionalizing field? To what extent do GINGOs conform with or challenge professional norms in international aid? We draw on two sources of evidence: a “large n” comparative website analysis of 60 GINGOs active in Haiti and 8 large, professional INGOs and a “small n” critical discourse analysis of select homepages. Websites, combining images and messages, signal organizational values and operations while also shaping public perceptions of the developing world. Our research finds that despite expected differences in sophistication and financial accountability, small and large organizations alike converge in their narration of beneficiaries, with the “needs-based” approach prioritized over “rights.” We explore the troubling implications of these findings for beneficiary empowerment.
Author: Denis Kennedy (College of the Holy Cross) -
The paper addresses the problem of developing accountable behaviours in big international-non-governmental organisations (BINGOs) with complex organisational structures. Modern bureaucratic institutions are rarely suitable social environment to hone capacities for responsible and accountable behaviour. Alasdair MacIntyre highlights the problem by arguing that responsible behaviours (including integrity) and moral agency requires particular type of social setting that modern bureaucracies are not able to provide. Through presenting early findings from qualitative research, the paper looks for potential solutions to enable individuals working within BINGOs to develop reflexive agency and ethical judgement. The research follows pragmatist methodology, assuming epistemic equality between the researcher and the practitioner. Following findings from reiterative interviews with senior management in INGOs responsible for quality assurance and safeguarding, and whistle-blowers, the paper argues that authenticity stands at the core of responsible behaviours in bureaucratic context. Authentic agency entails not only ability to make independent judgements and challenge existing practices, but also creating organisational structures that allow learning and reflexive practices. Integrity, standing at the core of many INGOs strategies, therefore, entails actively and positively creating space for other individuals – including staff and communities supported by INGOs - to exercise their agency in a meaningful way.
Author: Marija Antanaviciute (Queen Mary University of London )
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Roundtable / The politics of comparison and relationality: colonial grammars, knowledge production & counter-politics - PART I Parsons Room
This BISA roundtable is Part one of two that seek to extend a number of rolling conversations among IR scholars concerning the relations but also tensions within and between logics and forms of coloniality as well as the conditions under which anti-colonial activism and solidarity can take root. Inspired by the work of Stoler and McGranahan (2007), Lowe (2015) and Puar (2007), we seek to both examine how colonial linkages are shaped in and through (intimate) circuits of practice as well as how comparative/relational analytics can perform and produce additional modes of colonial governance. We will further these discussions through posing questions that consider the politics of comparison and relationality as inherently historical matters that can never be politically disinvested; and thus can be part of but also efface the possibility of anti-colonial solidarities and movements. Taking this as our guiding premise, the participants of this first panel will consider the way colonial and imperial grammars operate across space and time, through exploring the tensions between claims to uniqueness (exception/singularity) and comparative teleologies and their mutual capacity to entrench colonial grammars. Participants will reflect on their work – which spans transversal nodes and apparatuses of policing, technology, child removal and knowledge production across multiple contexts, to help further decipher how colonialism continues to circulate, and thus produce new spaces and cause ‘the circulation of other things’ (Li 2018: 470).
Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working GroupChair: Sharri Plonski (Queen Mary University of London)Participants: James Eastwood (Queen Mary University of London) , Catherine Chiniara Charrett (University of Westminster) , Rhys Machold (University of Glasgow) , Sai Englert (University of Leiden) , Francine Rossone de Paula (Queens University Belfast) , Ida Roland Birkvad (Queen Mary University of London) -
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Panel / Ambitious Development and Development Ambitions: shifting goals and actors in African Development CarilolSponsor: Africa and International Studies Working GroupConvener: Laura Routley (Newcastle)Chair: Danielle Beswick (University of Birmingham)
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Africa is confronted with continuing calls for greater food security at several levels. Rising hunger in situations of conflict, famine and other manmade and natural disasters remains a constant threat. At the same time, changes in indigenous diets brought about by various factors appear to be having long term implications for health on the continent. Who would have guessed that Ethiopia, for instance, would go from recurrent famine thirty years ago to a diabetes epidemic in this decade? This study investigates the various changes in indigenous diet that are evident in two cases: Ethiopia and Kenya. Based on both a literature survey and empirical data from these two states, it considers the likely long term cost for African public health care budgets and possible ways to turn back the onset of chronic diseases once thought to be the curse only of the wealthy societies of the world.
Author: Martha Bridgman (South African Institute of International Affairs) -
The pitfalls and false promises of Africa’s foreign-funded ‘civil society’ boom since the 1990s has been a site of considerable academic endeavour. Foucauldian and Gramscian-inspired work, for example, demonstrated the continued insertion, mediation and, ultimately, co-option of NGOs by foreign and domestic governments in the service of economic and/or foreign policy objectives (e.g. Duffield 2001; Ferguson 1994; 2006; Hearn 2001; Tvedt 1998). More recent work has focused on the precise mechanisms of ‘disciplining dissent’ (Coleman & Tucker 2011) on the part of NGOs as they consolidate their place within the existing neoliberal global order, bringing their constituent subjects into line with key neoliberal tenets (Gabay 2011). This paper builds on the disciplining dissent literature to demonstrate how NGOs both discipline their constituents at the local, or ‘grassroots’, level in Tanzania whilst they themselves are disciplined by corporate and state power within Tanzania’s broader political economy. It does so through the extended examination of a highly sanitized, ‘air conditioned’ consultation meeting between a foreign agriculture firm introducing a contentious bio-fuel project, civil society representatives and local government in Bagamoyo district. It draws on 12 months’ further ethnographic research to contextualize the seemingly sterile meeting within the highly charged and contested political economy of Tanzania. It elucidates how the NGOs present ‘non-represented’ project-affected villagers but also how the corporation used meeting technique to mediate, stem and suppress any potential dissent on the part of civil society in the first instance, reaffirming the politico-economic hierarchies in the room. Thus the villagers affected by the biofuel project were doubly disciplined by both civil society and corporate actors and thus doubly distanced from the political sphere.
Author: Kathy Dodworth (University of Edinburgh) -
The United Nations has set a goal to eradicate poverty by 2030. In order to reach the goal, the development field must implement programs that are effective. Human-centered programs are identified as most effective and ethical in poverty reduction, yet the poorest of the poor are often not the target of large funded programs. Their communities are sometimes difficult to serve logistically. The population of Nairobi is approximately 4.4 million, of which 2.5 million live in slums. Kenya is considered one of Africa’s rising countries and a focus of U.S. investments, yet the reduction of poverty in Nairobi has been ineffective. This research is aimed to help the development field obtain some of the knowledge needed to successfully address abject poverty at the slum level where $1.90/day is not consistently earned. It widens the lenses of development to include critical consciousness of the poor, and may serve as a template for poverty reduction in other countries. Slum dwellers in Kenya and professionals in poverty reduction were surveyed to find out what they think are the best ways to reduce poverty. The results show similarities between professionals and slum dwellers, lack of critical consciousness in slum dwellers, and non-existence of programs that effectively reduce poverty at the slum level.
Authors: Angela R. Pashayan (Howard University, PhD Program)* , Richard Seltzer (Howard University, Full Professor) -
With nearly $150 billion in official development assistance, in addition to hundreds of billions in remittances and other forms of aid from ‘emerging’ donors such as philanthropists, diasporas and middle-income countries, the politics of aid still play a key role in shaping international relations. With the introduction of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, the international society has made significant steps in revising and broadening its understanding of ‘development’. The new narrative recognizes the mutual destiny all countries share in terms of social, economic and ecological sustainability. By dealing with interconnected challenges such as migration, conflict, terrorism and climate-change, development co-operation has broken into new frontiers and deepened the links between foreign aid, foreign policy, and domestic policies. At the same time, 2015 may have been “the zenith of global multilateralism”, as multilateral co-operation is increasingly coming under threat.
This dual development has important implications for our understanding of international agenda setting and contemporary international relations. As present-day development policies rarely arise from a single source or context, we need to examine how both the domestic and the international policy arena function as enabling environments to policy-making. The paper seek to advance the state of the art of on agenda setting and policy-making by compounding data from Norway, Malawi, and multilateral institutions. It sets out to answer the question: what actors and processes form the political agenda within the rapidly changing field of aid and development?
The paper shows the increasing linkages between foreign aid and security concerns in modern-day development co-operation. Taking the case of Norwegian policies on fragile states, migration and global education, it also show how the low salience of aid combined with its normative character enables policy entrepreneurs to pursue a number of ambitious goals relatively detached from domestic politics and oversight. The data material consists of more than 70 interviews, document analysis and participant observation.Author: Nikolai Hegertun (University of Oslo) -
Over the past two decades, international development consultancies have played an increasingly important role in the political economy of aid in sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, many activities traditionally overseen by donors themselves are now the responsibility of global consultancies, whose capabilities are enhanced by technical expertise, an entrepreneurial approach and significant capital reserves. In practice, this means that consultants are now major political and economic players across Africa, working on projects ranging from health and education, to infrastructure and governance and democracy. This paper will explore some of the implications of the rise of consultants through examining a particular initiative in Zimbabwe, the Transparency Responsiveness Accountability Citizen Engagement (TRACE) programme, which is operated by global consultants DAI. The programme, which manages funding from a range of major donors, aims to support civil society organisations in promoting democracy, good governance and human rights in a repressive, authoritarian state. The paper will argue that that whilst the programme is presented as merely fulfilling the requirements of donors, it has actually created a powerful new political actor in Zimbabwe, unifying formerly fragmented funding behind a singular purpose. This has significant implications for civil society organisations promoting democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe, as well as the volatile political landscape, where NGOs and opposition parties contest the authority of an increasingly authoritarian government. Beyond Zimbabwe, this case allows us to think more broadly about the implications of the privatisation of democratisation, and the role of global consultants as political actors.
Author: Farai Chipato (Queen Mary University of London)
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Panel / BISA Professional Development II Armstrong RoomSponsor: BISAConvener: Kyle Grayson (BISA)Chair: Kyle Grayson (BISA)
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Panel / Challenging Gendered Knowledge in IR’ Pandon RoomSponsor: Gendering International Relations Working GroupConvener: Ali Bilgic (Loughborough University)Chair: Julia Welland (University of Warwick)
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The state is the object from which domestic politics is studied, the primary actor in the international state system, and the object that is measured in order to engage in development programmes. As such, it holds a central place in political science and international relations. While there has been a developing body of literature that has examined the gendered state, analysing and considering the categorisations and hierarchical placements of the state as existing within the context of masculinized or feminized characteristics, this article argues that the post-colonial state in the Middle East and North Africa constitutes a queer state. It uses the logics of queer theory to understand how the state in the region is feminized internationally and masculinized domestically. It explores these dynamics in relation to Iran and Egypt, and considers the international, regional, and domestic political consequences of the queer existence in heteronormative political structures.
Author: Andrew Delatolla (The American University in Cairo) -
In this paper, I argue that IR needs to create more space for forms of writing that are less rigid than the conventional form of ‘scientific’ writing that prevails in the discipline. Feminist IR has already recognized the importance of narrative within IR research, but it has tended to focus on narratives, especially women’s narratives and experiences, as a form of primary data. I argue that we might also benefit from considering our own writing as a form of narrative, and take inspiration from work done by feminist and postcolonial IR scholars regarding the politics of our own writing form. The types of narratives we craft affect what we can say and think. The disembodied perspective of most conventional IR writing, what some call ‘fictive distancing’, pretends to be ‘objective’, yet mostly succeeds in hiding its own biases and in alienating both its readers and writers. One possible narrative method that might help work against the issues of standard, “boring” IR texts is to include the self in one’s writing. This is not an automatic solution but one possible avenue that is worth exploring. While such writing is sometimes criticized as being “self-indulgent,” it is not so when narrative that includes the self attempts to go beyond the self, to counter alienation and connect to the reader, to open up new insights, and to make audible something different. A more flexible form of writing is especially important when one tries to write about trauma – an important topic for IR, and especially feminist IR, even if this topic is not always labeled as “trauma” – as traumatic experiences makes one’s relationship to language and memory complicated, and require new linguistic forms in order to be narrativized and processed. A more open form of writing might therefore allow for a more complex and nuanced understanding of trauma and its effects within IR scholarship.
Author: Muriel Bruttin (University of Lausanne) -
The historical absence of women in canonical IR texts is widely documented (Owens 2018; Lake 2016; Hansen 2011) and demonstrates that the process of constituting the IR canon is gendered. The focus of this work has thus far concentrated on documenting absences. However, these absences are not a natural reflection of who is thinking and writing about IR, and there are increasing calls to examine how women’s work is actively written out of the IR canon (Owens 2018, 2; Lake 2016, 116). Examining the processes through which women’s international thought has been erased from the (largely Anglo-American) IR canon addresses one site of epistemic violence. This paper begins with ten key texts in disciplinary history, often cited as documenting or re-writing canonical thought, and examines the processes through which the texts themselves actively write women’s writing out of the canon. This paper draws on the work of Starnes (Starnes 2017) and folkloric approaches to the processes of canon negotiation to explore how women have historically been not just absent, but actively written out of IR. The novel use of Cinderella stories to perform folkloric readings of the texts helps to reflect back onto IR marginalizing practices that have become invisible in their familiarity and to reveal how innocuous-seeming ways of writing can in fact be violent. Understanding the marginalizing practices embedded in how we write reveals how gender marginalization is written into IR’s canonical boundaries, but also introduces an approach that can be applies to understanding racialized, colonial and ableist forms of epistemic violence in disciplinary writing.
Author: Kathryn Starnes (Manchester Metropolitan University) -
Can feminist International Relations (IR) research be reconciled with quantitative research methods?
A plethora of feminist scholars acknowledge and reflect that there is no ‘one feminist method’ of doing research. However, this paper argues that in advocating for a multi-method feminist approach to research, the relationship between the process and product of research have not been sufficiently problematised. Thus, this paper presents an internal critique of feminist knowledge creation within International Relations (IR) research by arguing that in privileging certain post-positivist ways of doing research, new knowledge hierarchies are created and sustained within feminist research. In order to make this case, this paper first attempts to analyse and problematise what ‘feminist research’ involves. Building on this conceptual clarity, subsequent sections of the paper look at the compatibility of ‘feminist research’ with various research methods. The second part of the paper delves deeper into feminist contentions with quantitative research methods, analyses the utility and contribution of quantitative methods to feminist IR scholarship, arguing that the two are not a-priori antithetical. In the final section, it introduces the concept of ‘gender statistics’ and further fleshes out the conditions under which quantitative methods could be compatible with feminist research. Empirically, the paper briefly uses the example of the Global Gender and Environment Outlook Report (UNEP, 2016) to explicate how a gender-centric analysis of macro and micro level sex-disaggregated data can open up beneficial avenues for feminist IR research.
Author: Shruti Balaji (London School of Economics) -
Queer theory is arguably at its most compelling and potent as a critique of identitarian politics. Queer theory’s exposure of the exclusions through which governing norms of intelligibility and ostensibly stable identity formations are constituted was inspired by and inspired the attempts by groups like Queer Nation to envision new forms of collectivity that blur lines of difference. Here were insights that promised to create possibilities for new practices of transnational solidarity. However, queer theoretical insights are few and far between within (feminist) International Relations scholarship on transnational solidarities and social movements.
This paper aims to put queer theory in conversation with the literature on transnational solidarity practices by exploring a fundamental tension at the heart of queer praxis: in order for queer scholars and activists to critique stable identity categories, they are required to launch that critique from the position of a subject that is intelligible within the very structures of identity they opposed. In short, they want to subvert identity but also to have it. It appears that the popular feminist, queer, and poststructuralist repertoire of deconstruction, resignification, and subversion promises more than it is able to offer.
Where do we go from here? This paper returns to the internationalism of the Third World Gays, the Pink Panthers, and other groups of the 1970s. It poses the question: What orientations toward questions of solidarity, borders, and the international might we find in the undertheorized histories of lesbian and gay liberationists? What new forms of collectivity and political subjectivity might they enable?
Author: Alexander Stoffel (Queen Mary University of London)
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Panel / Conceptual revisioning from the Global South Sandhill RoomSponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working GroupConvener: CPD Working groupChair: Kerem Nişancıoğlu (SOAS)
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This paper aims to engage with a certain ontopolitics of violence grounding the modern international order (Walker, 2010) and its law (Fitzpatrick, 2001). For this purpose, drawing on Jacques Derrida’s work, it (quasi-)conceptualizes what will be named as the ‘and’ of the world. Positioning itself in relation to the problem(s) of a One World/Many Worlds (Walker 1988), A World of Many Worlds (Cadena and Blaser 2018), Being Singular Plural (Nancy 2000), and After the Globe, Before the World (Walker 2010), the paper offers a Derridean rereading of the world/World differentiation (Prozorov, 2014). Thus, reengaging with the differentiation between an always already differing and deferring (quasi-ontological) world and ‘our’ sovereign, ‘modern international’ (ontic) world, the paper questions a certain (colonial) ontopolitics of language and law identified by Derrida with ‘globalatinization’ – and with ‘logocentrism’ more foundationally. In-between ‘the and of the world’ and such colonial ontopolitics of ‘modern international’ legal language, it contends, drawing on the works of Derrida, Mansfield (2010), Davis (2001), and Chakrabarty (2008), it is important to (re)think and conceptualize a ‘counter-sovereignty’ and another politics of language and translation.
Author: Roberto Yamato (PUC-Rio) -
In this work I take issue with the proliferation of a particular scholarly approach in its examination of drone warfare. Although feminist and critical theorists took it upon themselves to rethink the drone and to intervene critically in their examination of it, their work, I argue, remains a self-contained theoretical loop that speaks little of and to the lived reality of Pakistanis, Afghans and Gazans’ daily encounters with the drone. The intensification of scholarly works on drones is the result of colonial remnants gone unexamined. This scholarship has legitimized myths to the extent they function as truth. It has endeavoured and succeeded in laying the ground for an artificial and unnatural lexicon that speaks little of/to the lived reality of those who encounter the drone every day, let alone of/to further disciplines.
In what follows, I contest speculative Sci-Fi writing as a feminist and academically acclaimed mode of enquiry, particularly when juxtaposed with the dubiousness of feelings. Although both share a speculative element, the first has legitimized itself as a field of studies whereas the latter continues to be rendered void of any epistemic relevance. The unbearable whiteness of speculative feminist writing renders it academically and theoretically sound. At the same time, those feelings that emerge from the Other side of the “abyssal line” (Santos 2007) are yet to warrant academic recognition. I relate the feelings that permeate literary work from Pakistan (poetry) and Gaza (novels) on the drone in order to challenge white academics - notably self-professed (white) feminists’ - pompous and erring race to theorize the drone, as the recent scholarship would suggest.
I chart this work through the framework of felt theory, as advanced by Indigenous Studies scholar Dian Million. Feelings, in this work, no longer constitute a vacuous type of knowledge that is deemed non-meriting of crossing over the epistemic “abyss” (Santos 2007) that separates modern western thinking from further modes of thinking. By prioritising feelings over a relevent corpus of literature, I hope to showcase a decolonial praxis that stirs “wonder and indignation” and produces “new, nonconformist, destabilizing, and indeed rebellious theory and practice” (Santos 2007: 40).
Keywords. Drones, post-decolonization, felt theory, white academia.
Author: Sabiha Allouche (University of Exeter) -
In 2012, US President Barack Obama had warned that any attempt by the Syrian regime to move or use its chemical weapons would constitute a ‘red line’ that would change his ‘calculus’ in the region, triggering a ‘range of contingency plans’. However, after the Syrian regime’s chemical attack on the suburb of Damascus on 21 August 2013, the US and its British and French allies ultimately decided against a full-fledged humanitarian intervention in Syria to support the opposition. While many scholars have examined the political and normative implications of Western states’ failure to intervene, and Western citizens’ protests against the possibility of an intervention, very little scholarship has investigated the position of the Syrian opposition itself on the question of humanitarianism.
In this paper, I analyse the discourse on humanitarianism of Syrian opposition intellectuals, as part of an attempt to re-introduce the silenced voices of the people whom Western states aim at liberating with humanitarian interventions. Building on Rahul Rao’s observation that resistance in the Global South is entrapped into a ‘protest dilemma’ between cosmopolitanism and communitarianism (2010), I suggest searching within Syrian opposition intellectuals’ writings and practices for the predicated condition of revolutionary protest in the Global South by engaging with what Rao describes as sensibilities, emotions and feelings underlying political thought. Specifically, I make two arguments. First, I challenge the overarching interpretation that Syrian opposition intellectuals were divided into two clear camps, the interventionists and the anti-imperialists, by suggesting an alternative reading of their writings. Although Syrian writers did decide to call for or against a Western intervention against the regime of Bashar al-’Asad, they nevertheless stood out for their potential to challenge their own positioning. Second, feelings of frustration and helplessness suggested the desire for new conceptual resources to imagine resistance, revolution and humanitarian intervention in the postcolony beyond the task of recognition of imperial encounters. In doing so, they proposed to redefine the practice of humanitarian intervention by shifting our theoretical gaze from the metropole to the periphery.
In analysing the discourse of Syrian opposition intellectuals on the 2013 aborted intervention in semi-structured interviews collected during fieldwork in Beirut and Istanbul in 2016-2017, and in their articles published in the Syrian revolutionary magazines Al-Jumhuriya, Souriatna and Tl’a’na ‘al-hurayya, I show how local actors interacted with the Western discourses and policies of humanitarian intervention by proposing new ways to think humanitarian ideology.
Author: Adélie Chevée (SOAS) -
This paper will interrogate the contradictions of statehood and nationalism as they are worked out in the politics of a particular community: the Somali people. Here, the colonial encounter produced an extremely amplified tension between imagined state and national forms, with ‘Somali’ populations being divided by competing imperial powers into five distinct and largely self-governing territorial units: (southern) Somalia, Somaliland, Djibouti, the Somali Regional State of Ethiopia, and the Northeastern Province of Kenya. In the immediate aftermath of decolonisation, attempts at dissolving the territorial-administrative boundaries between these communities under the banner of ‘Greater Somalia’ (as a form of singular nation-state) led to both the unification of Somaliland and (southern) Somalia into what is today known as the state of ‘Somalia’, as well as a failed campaign of militant irredentism, which saw Ethiopia and Kenya fight back against Somalia’s belligerent attempts to annex their Somali-populated territories during the 1960s and 1970s. When rebellion and civil war caused the collapse of the government in Somalia in 1991, the people of Somaliland declared their separate independence and succeeded in building an indigenous model of political organisation aspiring to recognised statehood, thereafter ushering in an end to the dream of making coterminous the spaces of Somali identity and unitary Somali statehood.
This paper will look at how various Somali polities came to terms with this disjuncture between ‘ethno-national’ community and political community, particularly by constructing alternative notions of relationality and inclusion/exclusion that transcend modern models of statehood and nation. In Somaliland, for example, a horizontal social contract between a multiplicity of kinship groups served as the basis for polity-building, thus undercutting the hierarchical and abstract state form, as well as the unitary and homogenising view of the nation, while maintaining the idea of a collective social space. Furthermore, despite attempts by local and international actors to re-solidify sovereign order and territorial borders between communities through internationally-sponsored ‘state-building’ initiatives, Somalis have evaded such impositions through establishing deep networks of transboundary exchange, migration, political belonging and representation. This relationality is captured in the local idea of ‘Somali-ness’ (Soomaalinimo), a form of collective Somali identity divorced from politicised ideologies of a unitary Somali nation-state (qarnimada soomaaliyeed). Based on empirical research and analysis gained through extensive field research in the region, this paper will trace how struggles to (re)define the nature of collective sociality have been worked into broader Somali post-colonial efforts to construct political communities that overcome the violence and estrangement brought about by colonialism. It will argue that the historical experience of disillusionment with Somali nationalist irredentism has fostered the emergence of conceptual experimentation with alternative sources of identity, governance and international relations more attuned to indigenous models of justice, inter-communal contract and reciprocity—based on non-exclusionary and associational forms of peoplehood (beyond nationhood) and non-sovereign and consensual forms of political organisation (beyond statehood).
Author: Matthew Gordon (SOAS, University of London) -
States are primary actor in international politics. The notion of statehood has been linked to the notion of Westphalian states system and sovereignty. International politics as an independent academic discipline has completed a hundred years. In this period we have seen increasing number of new states in international politics. During the first half of the century self determination was linked only to the European context. The second half of the century has experienced new states due to decolonisation but cold war made the situation worse due to superpower rivalry. Anti imperial struggle united the peoples in the colonies to fight against imperialist powers but now there are separatist tendencies due to under-representation of particular section in that very former colony. Once a colony now it is behaving like an imperialist power which are suppressing its own people. It is important to assess the impact and opportunities offered by that experience. This paper explores how the process of state building and the demand for self-determination may offer a way of reconceptualising the Eurocentric epistemology of statehood in international politics. This paper will argue that self-determination and state building in the twenty-first century provide positive tools to rethink the belongingness and citizenship of the marginalised people by the binary division of self and other in international politics. It will pay particular attention to the concept of self-determination, sovereignty, intra-state violence, the rising demand of the nations and the need to redefine statehood in the twenty-first century.
Author: Ravi Kumar Varma (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
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Panel / Conflict management and security in Eurasia Daniel WoodSponsor: Russian and Eurasian Security Working GroupConvener: RESG Working groupChair: Marcin Kaczmarski (University of Glasgow)Discussant: Natasha Kuhrt (King's College London)
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On 27 September 1993 as the result of the large-scale offensive operation conducted by Abkhaz, Russian-Cossack and North Caucasian militants Georgian armed forces withdrew from the breakaway Abkhazia’s capital Sukhumi. The 1992-93 Abkhazian conflict led to the unprecedented mobilisation of foreign fighters from North Caucasus and other regions of Southern Russia. Hundreds of Chechen, Circassian, Ossetian, Russian-Cossack and even Transdnestrian insurgents fought alongside Abkhaz secessionists. The militant group such as Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus played a crucial role in the victory of secessionist groups. Some of the non-indigenous veterans of the Abkhaz conflict, such as Shamil Basaev or Ruslan (Khamzat) Gelayev continued militancy in North Caucasus. Nevertheless, the transnational militant activism in Abkhazia remains neglected in Academic literature. The central research question of this article seeks to address is: how the coalition between Abkhaz secessionists and North Caucasian transnational militant activists has been formed? The article aims to analyse the process of coalition-building between Abkhaz and North Caucasian activists. In this sense, the article will analyse the ideological appeal to the Abkhaz conflict, role of kinship and ethnicity, the rise of ethnic nationalism in the Post-Soviet area and other developments which impacted on the movement and participation of the foreign fighters in the conflict in Abkhazia. The article will also analyse the transnational networks emerged during the conflict in Abkhazia. The paper will use Social Movement Theory’s concept of building a transnational coalition to analyse the typology of this coalition, political opportunities, sense of common threat to explain the mobilisation. Besides, the paper will examine the composition of transnational militant groups in Abkhazia by exploring the ethnic, religious and cultural background of the foreign fighters in Abkhazia.
Author: Aleksandre Kvakhadze (Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GIFSIS)) -
As the importance of natural gas for the energy future of the European Union rises, many new pipeline projects are proposed to transfer rich resources of Eurasia towards Europe. Why do some of these projects succeed, and others fail? To explain this phenomenon, the energy security literature has focused mostly on the security of energy supply and demand, while the specific challenges faced by transit states attracted relatively less attention. This paper focuses on the reasons that make pipeline politics and economics controversial and challenging by introducing and operationalizing the concept of transit security. It defines transit security broadly where transit countries are sensible to changes in supply and demand in addition to pipeline-specific issues, which are determined by a combination of economic and geopolitical factors. It argues that in the case of Turkey, transit security is influenced by asymmetries in trade dependence and political power in addition to prospect of future rents from transit. The last section applies this framework to Eurasian gas transit in order to explain the success and failure of past, present, and future pipelines.
Author: Kerem Oge (University of Nottingham) -
In 2014 the Ukrainian crisis transformed the security environment in Europe and returned the question of Euro-Atlantic integration into Ukrainian political agenda. NATO membership has always been one of the divisive issues in national politics as it reflected a split of Ukrainian regional identities across geopolitical lines. Nevertheless, after losing control over Crimea and the Eastern regions, the issue of security has gained major importance for both domestic and foreign policies of the government. Even if the NATO membership is not to be accomplished in years to come, the notion of security has turned into a vital component of the Ukrainian national identity.
The research question of this paper is concerned with the ways how discursive articulations of security could evidence national identity change. Therefore, it compares the transformation of security, threat and danger in the Ukrainian elites’ discourses in the context of Euro-Atlantic integration from 2008 to 2018. Materials of analysis include both official and oppositional discourses in the form of statements, interviews and books published by the political actors of Ukraine. This qualitative research is based on intertextual model of foreign policy discourse within discourse-analytical approach.
The issue of security in its traditional military sense is natural to arise in debate on Euro-Atlantic integration. Notwithstanding, it is the change in articulation of security in in discourse may be key to demonstrate the dynamic of national identity change. Therefore, the analysis of discursive security articulation has demonstrated a range of competing identity projects among the elites. When in 2008 the breach of security for Ukraine was a hypothetical situation, the threats were articulated in mostly economic terms. In contract, by 2018 security has become a right and Euro-Atlantic integration – the only way to achieve it.Author: Iryna Zhyrun (National Research University Higher School of Economics) -
United Nations being the only global organization acquiring the formal recognitions from the states cannot handle all of the diversified problems of the world. As the world is becoming glocal in terms of organizations, UN needs to direct the particular problems as economic, human rights, security or plague to specifically founded organizations or UN-founded specific departments. In the meantime, some security problems exceed the national boundaries and become international. As it is known with the security issue that the problem can quickly be in the global sphere, there is the need for keeping regional or international problems to be solved under the roof of regional organizations. In the Western world this is achieved by NATO and recently by EU’s ad-hoc activities to act as security organization while in the Eastern world it is shared by different organizations as ASEAN, AU or CSTO. Although economic cooperation predominated in some, as ASEAN, these organizations are also charged with the maintenance of peace and security in their region, regardless amongst the member states or between the member and non-member states. In this regard, this paper studies the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)’s effectiveness in the Eurasian region security problems. Given one of the main security problem to become more international being the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, where CSTO stands is tried to be analysed as Armenia, one side of the conflict, is a member but the other side, Azerbaijan, is not.
Author: Zeynep Selin Balcı -
Developments in the EU's immediate neighbourhood in recent years - an armed conflict in East Ukraine and annexation of Crimea by Russia, have once again reignited the debate about the idea of (national) self-determination and the 'right' to secession. This paper aims to re-examine this highly contentious topic by focusing on the dynamics of self-determination (and secession) in the former Soviet Union and provide a comparative case study analysis of secessionist conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transdnistria, Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. The author seeks to historically contextualise current claims to self-determination and secession in these territories and examine in depth how the historical developments in these regions relate to (and shape) the contemporary ones. By placing these cases in comparative perspective, the paper aims to observe (and analyse) historical continuities and changing trajectories in how the principle of self-determination has evolved in the Soviet Union and how it has been applied in the former Union republics since the disintegration of the USSR. By better understanding different forms of agency and institutional structures that have fostered (or curtailed) these conflicts the author aims to fill the gaps in the existing political science literature on the subject and move the scholarly debate beyond the 'Kosovo precedent'.
Author: Nino Kemoklidze
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Panel / Critical Methods and Methodologies for IR Parsons RoomSponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working GroupConveners: Shannon Brincat (University of the Sunshine Coast) , David Duriesmith (Department of Politics and International Relations, The University of Sheffield)Chair: Shannon Brincat (University of the Sunshine Coast)
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Dialectics has been a pivotal method in various critical approaches to IR theory. Yet this approach has been erroneously seen as deriving solely from a Western and modern philosophical canon. Studies have rarely engaged with the historical forms of dialectical thinking that contributed to the conceptual development of dialectics, instead largely reducing it to a particular Marxist-Hegelian heritage. This paper overcomes this problem by ‘Worlding’ dialectics (as in the thought of LHM Ling) by engaging with the emergence of dialectical thinking in the Axial Age Civilizations: India, China, Persia, Greece and Palestine. Various elements of how this form of critical theorising emerged and contributed to social advances during this period are examined alongside the question of how dialectical thinking can advance IR theory in today’s crisis-ridden world.
Author: Shannon Brincat (University of the Sunshine Coast) -
Feminist methodologies place particular weight on participants’ voice, standpoint and agency in conducting research. Particularly when exploring topics such as violence, oppression and vulnerability feminist scholars have argued for the importance of listening and reflexivity. The use of life histories in International Relations particularly aligns with these goals by bringing us to the level of personal experience. However, what obligations come along with this method when researching those directly involved in violence? Reflecting on the process of collecting and then interpreting the life histories of former jihadi fighters the paper will explore what obligations are placed on feminist researchers who endeavour to ‘read’ a life. In particular, it will explore the awkward position of reading patriarchal and oppressive structures into individual’s biographies, in ways that they would reject.
Author: David Duriesmith (Department of Politics and International Relations, The University of Sheffield) -
For the last two years, my colleagues and I have been visiting military museums, exhibitions, remembrance ceremonies and war-related performances across Scotland as part of the Carnegie Trust research project, ‘War Commemoration, Military Culture and Identity Politics in Scotland’ (2017-18). As with many empirical research, this project led to a journey of personal discovery of new spaces and practices of society-military interactions through culture. This journey was challenging and very emotional, problematising our ability to conduct ‘emotional fieldwork’ (Cree 2017; Baker et al 2016), and engage in affective engagements in the working of Scottish/British everyday militarism. In this intervention, we would like to reflect on affective engagements with military-hosted theatrical performances as a means to investigate the nexus between creative research methods in military studies, and creativity and the ‘efficacy of art’ (Ranciere 2015). Based on Ranciere’s vision, I problematise what constitute ‘creative’ and ‘efficient’ practices of doing art and conducting critical military research. We argue that although Ranciere’s approach allows bringing sense and sense-making to the fore of the analysis, it obscures an ability of art to work towards both consensus and dissensus. We argue that the exploration of collisions of these logics from the perspective of Feminist IR can open up a route towards productive conversation between performers, soldiers, theatre-goers, and critical military researchers. In this paper, we focus on a single play, InValid Voices by Helen-Marie O’Malley from the 2018 Army@Fringe programme which was advertised as a piece that ‘offers insights into life as part of a forces family and the experience of Commonwealth soldiers’ through the recollection of autobiographical accounts of women’s experiences who served as soldiers or were married to Commonwealth soldiers from the infantry battalions of the Royal Regiment of Scotland which deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan during the GWoT (Army@Fringe 2018). For us, the experience of immersing ourselves in this play, interviewing artists, observing responses of the public and artists, and discussing this play with theatre critics (mostly negative reviews) problematized difficult questions such as: what can be seen as a creative and effective piece of art work, and what is our positionality a researchers in this process. We believe that in exploring these questions, we can productively disrupt and challenge the workings of the militarised multiculture (Ware 2012) and truly make the voices of Commonwealth soldiers, military wives and family members heard, seen and acknowledged.
Authors: Kandida Purnell (Richmond University, London) , Natasha Danilova (University of Aberdeen)* , Emma Dolan (University of Aberdeen)* -
Imagination and security go hand in hand. From the Hobbesian state of nature through to the contemporary security dilemma, the imagination is said to animate fears and fuel suspicions.
Yet for all its palpable centrality in security discourses, the imagination is a largely unexamined concept. The word is common, but its content – the character, function and operation of a particular faculty – is often assumed and rarely detailed. So how are we to engage with this concept and way of thinking critically in IR? This article highlights an account of the imagination implicit at the disciplinary core of IR, built up on the Hobbesian preoccupation with the prospect of a sudden and violent death. Reading this tradition critically, it then foregrounds broader aspects of the imaginative faculty, including its active and intersubjective qualities. Contrasting with Hobbes so called ‘state of nature’ scenario, we explore this fuller conception of the imagination via Hegel’s master/slave dialectic and through Activity Theory, developed from methods in Cultural Psychology. We argue that the imagination, properly understood, entails a transformative potential that can overcome the allegedly endemic dynamics of insecurity often associated with IR, which have often set the limits of possibility for international politics.Authors: Tim Aistrope (The University of Kent) , Shannon Brincat (University of the Sunshine Coast) , Caitlin Sparks (UNESCO)*
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Panel / Critiquing IR Bewick RoomSponsor: Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working GroupConvener: CRIPT Working groupChair: Flaminia Incecchi (University of St Andrews )
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In his famous 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama argued that realist theories of power-political competition had outlived their usefulness in an age where liberal recognition would reign as much between nations as individuals. However, this paper argues that not only has realism failed to wither away, but also that the very "end of history" idea - and the conditions from which it arose - gave life to sophisticated variants of it. To make this case, I review and contextualise two bodies of literature that have emerged since 1989 where they did not exist before, namely the historiographical reclaiming of "classical" realism in IR on the one hand, and the resurgence of realism in political theory (PT) on the other. I find that, despite attempts to engage these two bodies of literature by assailing the blindness of PT realism to IR historiography, they spring from quite different intellectual responses to the end of history. On the one hand, as Fukuyama anticipated, the peaceful collapse of international bipolarity catalysed a questioning of the realist paradigm in IR and, in turn, a greater intellectual pluralism. In this context, following scholars such as Brian Schmidt, there began a thoroughgoing excavation of IR’s disciplinary history, resulting in numerous revisionist accounts of a pre-positivist “classical” realism that could be mobilised in the eclectic new theoretical arena. But such intellectual pluralism in IR stands at several removes from what PT realism has identified as an enfeeblement of the imagination in “real politics” since the 1990s. Indeed, for scholars such as Chantal Mouffe, John Gray, Jeremy Waldron and Raymond Geuss, the “end of history” idea – and the technocratic, consensus-driven, and even authoritarian politics it is seen as having enabled – is the ideological analogue to Rawlsian liberal theory, whose ideally just realistic utopia appears uncannily similar to the structure of the American republic. Against Rawls’s “applied ethics” model, realists offer to reinsert the “the political” into PT, drawing normative inspiration from within the conflictual domain of politics itself rather than from an idealised moral realm, in order to secure liberal democracy on more agonistic bases. If these two bodies of literature are to be brought into fruitful conversation, I conclude by suggesting, each must listen to the other: PT realism must surely revisit the history of IR realism, but “critical” IR historians – and perhaps “critical” IR more generally – would do well to take seriously the insights of realist PT into key issues of theory and practice. I then suggest a research programme that could realise such a coming together.
Author: Samuel Dixon (London School of Economics) -
The discipline of IR and its underlying concepts deserve critique for being overly simplistic and static, unable to tell us much about a complex social reality. The future of International Studies thus lies in adding philosophical and psychological meaning to IR concepts, or in other words, in taking social constructivism seriously. Crucial with this is to rigorously apply existing, interdisciplinary insights on identity and behaviour to International Relations.
This paper suggests one such route: To rectify the rather static and path-dependent identity-behaviour nexus posited by the ontological security scholarship, it suggests to place the interdisciplinary ‘collective memory’ concept at the basis of IR’s identity term. With this, a strong temporal dimension is introduced into the identity concept. In positing that collective memory is at the root of a country’s identity, this paper finds that it forms state behaviour in dynamic and open ways through past, present and future. Fusing collective memory with IR’s identity concept furthermore not only proposes a new way for constructivists to show how identity forms behaviour but also how it lies at the basis of normative action, structuring a country’s value system.Author: Kathrin Bachleitner (University of Oxford) -
The paper explores the limits and possibilities of critique in “critical” International Rela-tions (IR). “Critical” IR, we argue, is at an impasse: increasingly self-referential and paro-chial, it is no longer emancipatory. This article identifies the lack of normative orientation in “critical” IR as the fundamental problem. Due its adoption of predominantly non-normative understanding of its epistemologies, it can neither rethink nor reorient political praxis. We demonstrate the lack of normativity through three examples: the equation of “theory” and “ideology”, securitization theory, and the (mis)use of deconstruction. Taking inspiration for the role of the critical theorist as outlined by Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, we subsequently develop notions of thin and thick normativity. Both concep-tions of normativity, we argue, are necessary in order to reconceptualise critical theorizing so that it is both emancipatory and global in its underlying epistemologies and ontologies. This is illustrated in the final section through an engagement with cosmologies, which, we argue, exhibit both thick and thin normativity. Such an engagement opens “critical” IR up to cultural (including religious) difference while not essentialising it into binaries and hier-archies.
Authors: Hartmut Behr (Newcastle University) , Giorgio Shani (International Christian University) -
Prediction has long been considered the gold standard for scientific inquiry—indeed, Karl Popper famously distinguished scientific inquiry from pseudoscience by the former’s ability to produce falsifiable predictions and the latter’s all-encompassing explanatory mutations. But while social sciences like International Relations (IR) have paid ample attention to predictions’ weight, relevance, and evaluation, far less attention has been paid to the quality of unpredictability and its strategic consequences. This absence is all the more glaring due to US President Donald Trump’s stated foreign policy doctrine of unpredictability, which seeks to exploit Trump’s personal erratic behaviour for strategic gain in international negotiations. While some pundits have dismissed this doctrine as a post hoc rationalization, this article takes seriously the possibility of a foreign policy based on unpredictability and seeks to unravel its possible implications. Rather than viewing unpredictability as inherently amorphous, this article seeks to typologize the phenomenon according to whether poor predictive capacity is due to a limited number of iterations, insufficient models built on incomplete historical data, or a larger metaphysical uncertainty as to the universe of possible outcomes. In its final section, it re-examines Trump’s invocations of unpredictability as an explanation for his foreign policy decision-making. Though Trump does not clarify what type of unpredictability he is referring to in the aggregate, this article argues each potential interpretation implies a different strategic scenario, with important implications for other states’ behaviour.
Author: Adam Lerner (Royal Holloway)
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Panel / Environmental Harm and Justice Dobson RoomSponsor: Environment Working GroupConvener: Duncan Weaver (Easton College)Chair: Hugh Dyer (University of Leeds)
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Climate change tends to be defined as a change in the pattern of weather, and related changes in oceans, land surfaces and ice sheets, caused by humans, occurring over time scales of decades or longer. It is a Western concept which has been exported to countries in the global South through diplomatic relations, non-governmental organisations, the media and academic studies. We question the Western meaning of the concept of climate change as Pacific Islanders have argued that the concept of climate change does not exist in their native languages and that the narratives surrounding the concept of climate change originated from the outside.
We aim to understand how climate change is understood by people in Samoa and how these understandings are informed by their religious/theological/spiritual perspective. This focus is important because Samoans, and the Pacific islanders in general, are deeply religious. They believe that natural catastrophes and extreme weather changes can be attributed to religious reasons such as the anger of the gods. It is important to investigate the link between climate change perceptions and religion as religion informs the behaviour and agency of people to address climate change causes, impacts and responses. Furthermore, studies have shown that conservative Christians have opposed climate science, saying human induced warming goes against God’s omnipotence. We therefore argue that to be effective, climate change policies require religious perspectives as the latter will motivate people to address environmental changes.Authors: Rev Latu Herbert Latai (Malua Theological College (Samoa)) , Sarina Theys (Newcastle University)* -
Rising powers from the global South are increasingly challenging the Western-led liberal international order. In this paper, we ask how these rising powers form and perform their roles in the interactions that shape global governance structures. Although the interests and behavior of states in international institutions and negotiations are well documented, existing scholarship has neglected their microfoundations in the formation of national identities. We argue that the identities and self-perceptions of rising powers affect how these actors perceive and perform their role in global governance. As a plausibility probe, we map the distribution of national identities for two rising powers – Brazil and India – and their role perceptions on to their negotiating behavior. We focus on how Brazil and India’s national identities influenced negotiation outcomes at two key moments in the history of international environmental governance: 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement. In doing so, we develop a constructivist account of how transforming national identities constitute rising power role self-perceptions, which in turn allows evaluating both the kinds of strategies and outcomes these actors are more likely to pursue and the kinds of roles they are willing to assume.
Authors: Manali Kumar (National University of Singapore)* , Isabella Franchini (National University of Singapore/King's College London)* , Simon Herr (University of St. Gallen) -
The Forest Rights Act (FRA) promulgated in 2006, redefined the meaning of terms such as ‘forest’ and ‘land’ itself. Replacing the terminology of possession with the language of ‘belonging,’ the FRA promised a giant leap in the development of community rights in the country. By articulating legally binding definitional changes in the notions of property and ownership, the FRA empowered forest dwellers of the country to resist encroachment of traditional lands by empowering communities to exclude those that do not lay communitarian claims on the land.
Implementation of the FRA however, has been riddled with obstacles. An environmental opposition has been mounted that argues that the FRA and the representation it offers traditional forest dwellers amounts to a threat of destruction to forests itself. A binary between community rights and forest rights has therefore been created. Meanwhile, the State, remains absent in the proceedings of the Supreme Court, despite being the chief defender of FRA as its drafter and enforcer. The development logic of the new regime in power is significantly different from the regime that first enacted the FRA.
This paper attempts to look at the debates around the FRA and argue that the changed logic of development under the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) government has joined forces with forces of hyper-conservationism to present a misleading narrative that attempts to undercut a worthy piece of legislation guaranteeing rights to millions of forest dwellers in India. Further, it attempts to situate this debate in theories of degrowth and attempt to locate the changing definition of development both for the State and the people it defends.Author: Devika Misra (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.) -
The paper examines the ability for climate justice organisations in the Global South to influence local and national policy. The paper argues that they can do so beyond In particular, through their control of knowledge, ability to classify the world, ability to affix meaning, their role in the creation and diffusion of rules and norms, and ability to use ‘communication power’ to control, shape and influence the transfer of information. The paper contributes to the growing but still limited scholarly interest in climate justice activism beyond the Global North, and in the role of non-governmental organisations in the framing of environmental challenges and the production of knowledge and ideas. Further, the paper considers how climate activists in the Global South understand ‘climate justice’, and how their efforts at the local level are understood in relation to the global ‘climate emergency’. Though growing in other disciplines, climate justice has had limited engagement with international studies. The paper focuses on the case of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA), a climate justice NGO in Durban, South Africa. The organisation has been active in lobbying, reporting and researching on local environmental injustices in Durban, and the implications of climate change on South Africa’s most vulnerable inhabitants. Based on fieldwork, the paper draws on the experiences, opinions, and understandings of climate activism, policymaking, and ‘climate justice’ by these grassroots activists in South Africa.
Author: Neil James Crawford (Centre for Climate Justice)
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Panel / Foreign policy, politics and hegemony in a changing global order Swan RoomSponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working GroupConvener: Omer Tekdemir (University of Bolton)Chair: Omer Tekdemir (University of Bolton)Discussant: Dag Erik Berg (Molde University College)
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In the absence of a central authority in the International system, states interacting patterns are depending on their security interests. In the current scenario, Pakistan’s relations with Russian Federation, who have currently a competitive role in the global power politics is significant for Islamabad to emerge as a regional player by utilizing her own geo-strategic position in the region. The uneasy relationship between Pakistan and Soviet Union during the Cold War phase and Islamabad’s alignment with Washington against global War on Terror, now a history. In recent times, Pakistan and Russian federation came closer towards each other by converging their security and economic interests due to swiftly changing the regional security environment. In that milieu, the US and India’s fast growing security strings create a strategic space for Pakistan and Russia to connect each other in security framework. Moreover, the growing security cooperation between these two countries also help them out to enhance their economic ties by utilizing the Belt and Road Initiative and particularly China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Therefore, Islamabad and Moscow’s security cooperation can play a vital role to maintain regional stability in terms of balancing regional alignment.
Author: Bilal Bin Liaqat (Government College University Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan) -
In the Post New Order period, there was a significant development in Indonesia. The military, which was used as a political tool by the authoritarian regime, underwent a fundamental reform. The process was supported by the military leaders, which resulted in the issuance of the new Law on the Indonesian National Defence Forces in 2004. This legal basis has since guided how the Indonesian military operates in dealing with external and internal security threats and curbs the socio-political role of the Indonesian military, which is associated with the New Order period. However, it has not explicitly touched upon the implementation of defence diplomacy, which has significantly increased within the last decade. Hence, this paper aims to analyse the transformation of Indonesia’s Defence Diplomacy in the Post New Order period.
The paper attempts to answer two key questions: “Why has Indonesia increasingly relied on defence diplomacy as part of its overall diplomacy?” and “What factors account for different practices undertaken in Indonesia’s defence diplomacy?” The paper qualitatively scrutinises the transformation of Indonesia’s defence diplomacy by comparing three case studies of defence diplomacy activities, namely strategic consultations, joint exercises, and inter-military assignments, under different administrations in the Post New Order era. Additionally, it observes the four reasons for Indonesia’s defence diplomacy. In supporting the analysis, the paper relies on the combination of interviews and observations performed during fieldwork from July 2018 to July 2019.
An examination of Indonesia’s defence diplomacy transformation in the Post New Order period is critical to help understand how Indonesia has developed its engagement with external partners through diplomacy by using its defence ministry and military, as part of the national instruments. Hence, this paper offers an alternate approach to studying Indonesia’s defence diplomacy under democratic control.
Author: Frega Wenas Inkiriwang (London School of Economics and Political Science) -
President D. Trump's decision on American troops withdrawal became shocking to many U.S. allies and provoked discussion about the meaning of "small allies" in current and future U.S. policy in the face of permanent competition in the Middle East with the compelling example of war in Syria. Author's paper is mainly focused on the analysis of current U.S. strategy towards Syria and the Middle East, in comparison with Russian activity in this region, in particular. The overall mosaic of U.S. and Russian interests and rivalry for influences in Syria and the Middle East are also a key aspects of the paper.
The paper is based on neorealist approach with the analysis of usefulness this theory in such a region of multiple interests and interdependencies as the Middle East. Besides that, the comparative method (in case of U.S. and Russian activities in Syria) and predictive analysis based on key facts and findings are also applied.
The main aim of the paper is to explain reasons of U.S. recent decision on Syria and characterise possible implications for U.S. policy in the Middle East after its trouble-free troops’ withdrawal, leaving "small allies" alone. Potentially, U.S. credibility might be decreased what can lead further to loss of influences in the Middle East. The decision taken by U.S. government, especially in the time of global power's competition, might not be regarded as standard behaviour of global/regional power what also inspired Author to present complex explanation. In comparison to U.S action, Russian opportunity for expansion of permanent influence will be analysed in terms of domination over U.S. or dragging Russia into Syrian imbroglio with all the consequences.Author: Rafał Ożarowski (E. Kwiatkowski University of Administration and Business in Gdynia) -
The rise of China has attracted heated arguments as it is predicted to trigger the transition of the US-led liberal order. Moving beyond the materialist assumption, existing scholarship has started to explore the normative elements of hegemony and order transition. A noticeable contestation arises between those who argue the reigning liberal order is capable of accommodating and assimilating the authoritarian China and those who argue China will fashion its alternative China-led counterhegemonic order. Though they arrive at different conclusions, they share the assumption that liberal order and its supporting norms and the rising China are normatively incompatible, and these two are locked in a zero-sum competition. Through the lens of the dynamic constructions of China’s identity, this article examines the normative dimension and prospect of the rise of China. It argues that China is not contesting the Western liberal order in the form of pursuing its own hegemonic order. Rather, it does so by calling for a global order without a reigning normative hegemony. Instead of negating liberal norms, China partially accepts liberal norms such as sovereignty and multilateralism. And by turning to traditional Chinese cultural values such as benevolence, inclusiveness, and harmony without uniformity, and by characterising the US for unilateralism and protectionism and the West for double standards, China argues against Western supremacy and advocates toleration of ideological and political diversity. However, it seems this Chinese proposal is denied by the West who highlights in its discourses liberalism’s universality and the authoritarian China’s normative inferiority.
Author: Juntao He (University of Bristol )
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Panel / Global Political Economies of Trade and Development Stephenson RoomSponsor: International Political Economy Working GroupConvener: IPEG Working groupChair: Rowan Lubbock (Queen Mary, University of London)Discussant: Sophia Price (Leeds Beckett University)
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Some 15 years ago, the late Adrian Leftwich published an article documenting “how, at last, a recognition of the centrality of politics seems to have emerged in development theory and policy.” Writing during the heyday of a policy-defining focus on good governance and institutional reform in North-led multilateral organisations, Leftwich struck a cautiously celebratory tone and laid out the challenges that faced development agencies and scholars in a new era characterised by “politics in command.” This paper explores how this operative concern with politics has steadily dissipated over the past decade. It traces the evolution of the good governance agenda from its inception in the early 1990s onwards, and identifies several world-political and international-organisational factors that over the past decade have reduced the preoccupation with good governance and institutions in the international development regime to an increasingly harmless, sterile activity without a transformative ethos. Much of the empirical discussion centres on the case of the World Bank, recent fieldwork data on which illustrates how its lending practice and research output responded to external and internal challenges to re-imagine governance primarily as a realm of optional technical fixes.
Author: Ali Burak Guven (Birkbeck, University of London) -
The Sustainable Development Goal principle of “leaving no one behind” has led to increased attention being paid to patterns of intra-country allocation of foreign aid. We contribute to these efforts by considering a particular type of foreign aid, Aid for Trade (AfT) to discern allocation objectives. We match a novel, geo-coded, dataset on over 11,000 Bangladeshi exporting firms to over one thousand AfT project locations in Bangladesh similarly geo- coded by AidData and expanded by ourselves. We use this data to employ spatial techniques that evaluate political economy logics of allocation, wherein AfT is functionally targeted towards clusters of exporting firms, is allocated based on prebendalism, and/or is directed to high poverty areas. Our analysis finds the strongest allocation patterns when all three logics are present. This suggests that allocation logics may not be either/or, but instead, that the subnational locating of aid is driven by multiple aims.
Authors: Arya Pillai (University College Dublin) , Minhaj Mahmud (Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies)* , Samuel Brazys (University College Dublin) -
Since the beginning of the 1990s, globalization process and the diffusion of liberal values and economic statements were announced as the appropriate way of acting for all countries aspiring to achieve better standards in terms of development. Although the diffusion was very active, including via multilateral organizations, in the 2000s it became clear the announced benefits had not been fulfilled leading to more and more criticism. The diagnosis was that instead of bringing more equality between countries, what was being revealed was the contrary: there were some actors that noticeably were benefiting more while the recommended implementation of the liberal agenda was leading to more inequality between and within countries. This concentration process was discussed and debated throughout the next decades and left consequences, including when taking into consideration the minimum state platform and it effects in terms of welfare and social protection. In this direction, the purpose of this article is to discuss within the contemporary scenario, what the role of international institutions for development is on reducing inequalities inter and intra countries. On the other hand, taking the discussion to the institutional framework and Global Governance, what can be done in terms of international cooperation and by which path it should be pursued, so that a better result could be achieved in terms of development and reducing inequalities on global scope?
Regionalism became a way of dealing with contemporary challenges and this grouping could be geographically related (as the free trade areas) or broader agreements even without the geographical component, also called by “new regionalism”, referring to the global geopolitical reordering after the end of the Cold War.
Analyzing new agreements for international cooperation, new economic development strategies, insertion into a new dimension of the international division of labor, and also the adherence to new institutional arrangements for financing development (as NDB and AIIB initiatives), represent key issues to understand contemporary scenario in which this debate has become essential. This allows a critical reflection on the conditions of the present, the past constraints and the future possibilities, trying to understand the consequences and effects of this range of transformations.
In this sense, by adopting the perspective and framework proposed by the International Political Economy approach, debating the role of new international institutions and the conduct of policy makers, understanding how these dynamics affect the regions across the globe, also bringing to discussion the relevance of revisiting and checking new possibilities in terms of Global Governance to face ongoing challenges related to development process and combating inequality(ies), are themes addressed by this article.Author: Gabriel Rached (Federal Fluminense University & Università degli Studi di Padova)
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Panel / Old Wars, New Technologies? – Challenging and Tracing the Changing Character of War Martin Luther KingSponsor: War Studies Working GroupConvener: James Rogers (Yale University)Chair: Sharad Joshi (Middlebury Institute of International Studies)Discussant: James Rogers (Yale University)
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The majority of literature focussed on the concept of conflict in cyberspace has focussed on a definitional approach, with regards to whether an action breaches the threshold required to be considered an act of war. This approach is considered to be unsatisfactory and artificially constrains the potential for how, and the importance of, conflict within cyberspace has, and can develop, in the future.
This paper takes the position that there are four clear stages in the development of conflict in cyberspace. Each stage is identifiable by a different relationship between the real and the virtual world. It is this battle for supremacy that represents the true challenge of cyberspace to the modern world; the conflict between the real world and the virtual world.
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This presentation investigates conceptions of remoteness which underpin arguments for the novel category of remote warfare, arguing that remote warfare suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity on the nature of the remoteness which sets such warfare apart from other forms of contemporary warfare. To demonstrate that such remoteness is neither new nor exclusive to so-called remote warfare, I explore three forms of militarised remoteness through the use of armed drones in the Global War on Terror, arguably the paradigmatic form of remote warfare. The first of these is the remoteness of security operations, namely the conception that the integrity of a state is to be secured away from a state's territory; the second lies in the remoteness of decision making, where decisions are made thousands of miles away from the battlespace. The third lies in the remoteness entailed by aerial warfare and sensing. I argue all three characteristics are integral to the practice of drone-led warfare, and yet none can be considered indicative of the novelty of drone warfare or of remote warfare writ large. I conclude, therefore, that the categorization of armed drones as manifestations of a new form of remote warfare is conceptually misguided and vacuous.
Author: Emil Archambault (School of Government and International Affairs, University of Durham) -
The paper examines parachute combatants experimental body-centred encounters with verticality during parachute descents at Ringway Aerodrome Manchester, 1940-1945. I trace how falling bodies encountered, were organised in, and produced space for air-led warfare and, by extension, how falling bodies perform alternative geopolitical realities for States. First this paper will conceptualise a political geographies of falling. I call for greater critical conceptual thinking on the art of falling as a body-centred micro-mobility, capable of exerting geopolitical influence through mobile bodies penetrating and occupying inter/national air space. Second, I outline three design principles cultivated during the act of falling in order to advance theorisations of the production of aerial space. Repetition, proximity and alignment, I argue, are key principles through which moving bodies produce, and are products of, a vertical geopolitics. In particular, I turn to the Royal Air Force’s practical airborne training programme – from captive balloon and aircraft – as a means for enacting ‘high readiness, forced entry’ operations through the amalgamation of man, technological-non-human, and air. By bringing the embodied geopolitics and military geographies literatures into conversation with mounting scholarship on verticality, this paper focuses on the production and performance of political space through falling. This enables for a critical assessment into the entangled geographies of bodies, non-humans and atmosphere within vertical space, but more specifically how gravity-defying bodies realised a, high speed, covert mobility capable of global vertical dominance and for disputing inter/national aerial sovereignty.
Author: Charlotte Veal (Newcastle University) -
In the second half of the 19th century, Meiji Japan embarked upon an unprecedented period of military-technological transformation. With the help of a series of Western military missions, the new Meiji state constructed a modern, technologically-advanced army and navy in the space of just a few short decades. Then as now, military assistance programmes envisage the transfer of military aid in return for particular political undertakings on the part of the recipient, propagating the donor’s model of martial expertise, praxis and technology in the process. Indeed, the case of Meiji Japan is touted as an exemplar in the diffusion of warfare. Yet, in Meiji Japan as in more recent experience, military assistance often produces partial or hybrid local military forms. Constructivist and STS approaches view such adaptive fusions as an inevitable consequence of relocating complex material and social systems. Meanwhile, rationalist scholars look to principal-agent theory, advocating for greater conditionality and coercion in military aid to manage interest asymmetries between recipient and donor. This paper examines the social, technical and political patterns of military diffusion in Meiji Japan, arguing that a market for military assistance undermined conditionality in the provision of military assistance, undermining both donor political leverage and the coherence recipient martial change. In so doing, it challenges some of the conclusions drawn from recent army-building endeavours in Iraq and Afghanistan, to question British visions of global ‘defence engagement’ as a tool for informal influence.
Author: Alex Neads (University of Bath)
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Panel / Politics of Migration in the Global South and the Postcommunist Space Collingwood RoomSponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working GroupConvener: Maria Koinova (University of Warwick)Chair: Amanda Beattie (Aston University)Discussant: Amanda Beattie (Aston University)
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Diaspora Identity and a New Generation: Armenian Diaspora Youth on the Genocide and the Karabakh War
In this paper, we explore the role of the early 20th-century Armenian genocide and the unresolved Karabakh conflict of the 1990s in conceptions of identity among the new generation of Armenian diaspora - those who grew up after the establishment of the independent Armenian state in 1991. We draw on original interviews with Armenian diasporic youth in France, the United Kingdom, and Russia - the diasporas that were largely built in the aftermath of the genocide and the Karabakh war. Diaspora youth relate to these events through transmitted collective memories, but also reconnect with the distant homeland’s past and present in new ways. We explore how the new possibilities of digital communication and transnational mobility reinforce or challenge established identity narratives and memories transmitted through generations. Identity experiences of the diapora youth shed light on how the new generation of diasporic Armenians defines itself in relation to the past; how this past is (re)made present in their interpretations of the Karabakh conflict and in everyday behaviors; and how diasporic youth experience the dilemmas of “moving on” from traumatic narratives that for a long time have been seen as foundational to their identity.
Authors: Dmitry Chernobrov (University of Sheffield) , Leila Wilmers (Loughborough University)* -
The paper investigates the growing connection between logistical thinking and humanitarian responses in current strategies of managing population movements and organizing humanitarian space, particularly in the context of South-South circulations. It analyses the case of Brazil, specifically its response to the current influx of Venezuelan migrants and asylum seekers, arguing that the militarization of humanitarian assistance has infused the protection efforts with a logistical mindset and a specific spatial orientation of containment/movement. It argues that i) the experiences of Venezuelans have been subsumed into a logistical framework, where control over movement in a spatially structured manner has taken precedence over concerns regarding protection and that ii) protection has been subsumed into migratory regularization and flexible yet standardized sets of procedures, organized around administrative and strategic pipelines and infrastructures. It reviews contributions on the connection between the historical evolution of logistics as a science of managing circulations and how it has travelled, in this particular context, to the control of peoples and their movement. The paper is based on fieldwork conducted in the Northern border of Brazil with Venezuela in 2018 as part of a larger interdisciplinary project on lives in displacement and the situation of Venezuelans in Brazil.
Author: Carolina Moulin (CEDEPLAR/UFMG) -
In recent years, the rise of right wing and populist parties can be observed not only across Europe but also in the United States. The success of Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, Sebastian Kurz, Matteo Salvini are all examples of this trend. They are all clear in their claim that immigration is one of the main security threats to their countries. This trend can also be seen in Poland, where immigration was invoked in both parliamentary (2015) and local (2018) elections by the currently ruling party Law and Justice (PiS). Given the relatively small number of migrants in Poland, this concern seems unfounded. This paper is concerned with the processes by which the threat from migration has caught the public’s attention in a country with one of the smallest immigrant populations in Europe.
The aim of this paper is to analyse the securitisation moves of the Law and Justice Party that have constructed migrants as a security threat. It seeks to analyse the success of the securitisation process in Poland and to explore the extent to which extraordinary measures have been adopted in response to the ‘threat’ from migration in Poland. For this purpose, the Copenhagen School Approach will be used, where securitisation is understood as a speech act. The study will use critical discourse analysis of selected political ads, party’s comments on Twitter and public speeches given by party members.
Authors: Monika Kabata (Nottignham Trent University) , Christopher Baker-Beall (Bournemouth University)* -
The immigration detention centre has become a key technology of contemporary global border regimes designed to immobilise irregular migrants. Despite the radical vulnerability and rightslessness produced by these spaces, they have also become sites of numerous and varied acts of resistance, including hunger strikes, lip-sewing, sit-ins and barricades. This paper explores resistant acts undertaken by people detained by the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia, as well as the approaches of anti-detention activists. In doing so, it provides an account of the ways in which global logics of border control are repeatedly met by a multivalent, mobile and complex politics of resistance, that traverses boundaries of many kinds. This paper argues that such acts challenge entrenched notions about what politics is and how it can be practiced and, given that they are often related to self-destructive techniques, they also trouble understandings of the relationship of politics to suffering and trauma.
This paper speaks to existing scholarship in Critical Border Studies and Critical Citizenship Studies, and works both with and against current theoretical approaches that draw on biopolitics, in order to understand contemporary bordering practices and the political subjectivities they produce. Further, it takes a critical approach to humanitarian and advocacy interventions to examine how certain gendered and racialised assumptions, and conceptions of mental health, can serve to limit political meaning. Ultimately, this paper argues that by engaging with detained protesters as both political subjects and people who suffer, we gain greater insight into this emergent and multivalent politics.
Author: Lucy Kneebone (Queen Mary University of London)
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Panel / Processes of peace agreements and state building History RoomSponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working GroupConvener: Peacekeeping and peacebuilding Working group (BISA)Chair: Georgina Holmes (University of Reading)
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The time-related aspects attributed to references of peace within the preambles of peace agreements can either create or remove potential obstacles to building peace. This suggests that the opening words of peace agreements can be potentially problematic for a peace building process. In particular, this paper suggests that the articulations of long-term historical time perspectives within the preamble of a peace agreement have two noteworthy consequences: 1) they attribute specific perennial and ephemeral aspects to an agreement’s sought after peace and 2) they can set a potentially (in)conductive stage for a peace building process. To unpack this relationship, this paper first conceptualises long-term historical time perspectives and distinctions between perennial and ephemeral peace as articulated within peace agreements. Second, the paper then uses these conceptualisations to analyse of the preambles of peace agreements addressing interstate/interstate and interstate/intrastate conflicts from 1990 to 2018 as found in the PA-X Peace Agreements Database maintained at the University of Edinburgh. From this analyse, readers gain insights into the unique role long-term historical time perspectives play in embedding perennial peace within a peace agreement and the possible obstacles these time perspectives can potentially create for a peace building process. The paper concludes with broader implications these three conceptualisations have on future research in peace studies.
Author: Christopher Wheeler (Newcastle University) -
Preliminary research shows that in the majority of independence-seeking territories where international organisations engaged with statebuilding activities there was also titular recognition, i.e. a recognition that the group in question has a right to state independence. This paper uses congruence analysis in the case study of post-1999 international statebuilding in Kosovo to explore this question. The study of Kosovo confirms the hypothesis but also offers two further interesting findings: first, a recognition of a right to statehood might co-exist with the support of other alternatives ways to solve a dispute (e.g. autonomy within a different state). Secondly, the relationship between titular recognition and statebuilding is more dialectic and less linear: as institutions developed and were given to Kosovars, demands for independence grew, which seems to have left less room to international organisations to support other options for resolving the dispute with Serbia. In this regard, the paper makes a manifold contribution: First, the paper explores the role of international organisations in recognition, which has been neglected within a state-centric literature. Secondly, analysis moves away from binary understandings of recognition by exploring titular recognition as a different type of recognition somewhere in between the two extremes of non-recognition and recognition that have attracted most research attention. Thirdly and most importantly, the paper cross-fertilises the topics of recognition and statebuilding, therefore helping understand better their interrelation.
Author: George Kyris (University of Birmingham) -
Self-determination referendums have been used to resolve protracted self-determination conflicts. However, existing peacebuilding literature on them is limited and divided between those who claim they are dangerous because of their zero-sum nature and those who argue they contribute to peace without substantiating relevant causal mechanisms. Aiming at resolving this debate, this paper conducts comparative case studies of three self-determination referendums held based on peace agreements: Eritrea, East Timor, and South Sudan. Relying on more than 60 elite interviews, it analyzes 1) whether referendums help resolve the original self-determination conflicts and 2) what kind of impact referendums have on democracy and the amelioration of tensions inside the newborn states.
My argument is threefold. First, the referendums have helped resolve the original conflicts decisively even though they do not seem to have any effect on the long-term relationship between the newborn state and the rump state. Second, there is no evidence to suggest that the referendums helped accommodate differences inside the newborn states, but they could help consolidate democracy if other conditions permit it to sustain. Third, the unity of the pro-independence groups shown during the referendums contributed to excessive optimism within the international community regarding the future of the newborn state. They wrongly assumed that this unity would continue after independence, that this unity meant democratization would be easy, and that this unity indicated that there were no tensions within the pro-independence groups.Author: Kentaro Fujikawa (London School of Economics and Political Science) -
As the UN-sponsored peace processes in Syria and Yemen stagger on, it is imperative we investigate the previous attempts made to negotiate a resolution to these two crises. This paper will therefore explore the international community’s peacemaking efforts during the first four years of the Syrian and Yemeni civil wars through the prism of the following research questions: within the recollections of those who participated, do identities seem to have shaped international conflict mediation in Syria and Yemen? Do identities appear to have found expression within the peace process? Did the events of the peace talks themselves play a role in constituting the identities articulated?
Our understanding of the role played by identity, and indeed social forces more broadly, within international conflict mediation is extremely limited; moreover, due to the contemporary nature of the cases selected for investigation, our grasp of the particular characteristics and dynamics of the Syrian and Yemeni mediation attempts is also lacking. I will address this through a thematic analysis of seventy semi-structured interviews I have conducted with those implicated in the peacemaking efforts: the international officials together with the Syrian and Yemeni disputants. I hypothesise that a maelstrom of identities will be of significance to the mediation attempts; that the arena of the UN will have shaped the particular identities projected and crafted during the negotiations; and that a difference in perspectives on precisely which identities influenced the peace talks will be apparent between the disputants and the mediators.
Author: Sarah Clowry (Durham University) -
In fragile and conflict-affected states, local populations and external actors (especially from the West) can speak of the same non-state armed group in completely different terms. To the international community, these groups are security threats that must be contained or eliminated. To citizens of fragile states, these groups are just as likely to be security providers as security threats. How is it possible for the same group to be perceived so differently? To answer this question, this article proposes that fragile states and the international community do not share the Rules of the Game, but rather employ two separate sets of rules for war-to-peace transitions. Each set of rules is internally consistent to the world that conceived it, but viewed side-by-side, there is a yawning gap between them in terms of values, assumptions, and local understandings of how power, influence, and violence are used. Where the international community sees the institutional changes that need to be made in order to achieve a Good State, FCAS community members see a Personalized State that is subject to the weakest link problem. Where the international community prioritizes Security Sector Reform, local communities in fragile pragmatically evaluate which actor or armed group is the most capable of security provision. Where the international community views the law as impartial and fixed, FCAS citizens know that it is relative and malleable. Given such different understandings about what is expected by the international community and how non-state armed groups operate on the ground, this article serves as a “translation device” between these two worlds. It reveals that the international community conceives of core issues like Security Sector Reform and Rule of Law very differently from the populations that it serves.
Author: Christine Cheng (War Studies, King's College London)
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Panel / The Global Politics of Cyberspace: Mapping the Emergence of Communities of Practice Council ChambeSponsor: Interpretivism in International Relations Working GroupConveners: Andre Barrinha (University of Bath) , Louise Marie Hurel (London School of Economics and Political Science)Chair: Helena Farrand Carrapico (Northumbria University)Discussant: Madeline Carr (UCL)
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At the centre of the emergence of practice in the study of contemporary politics of cyberspace lies a deeply rooted concern with questions of agency and power – both material and non-material, human and non-human. The interplays of such interactions configure a playing field where attacks, vulnerabilities, incidents and infrastructures are constantly contested, reclaimed, negotiated and controlled. Much attention has been paid to the role of states and businesses in determining what is “knowable” and relevant when it comes to cybersecurity threats. Be it through public attribution, incident reports and/or privileged access to vast amounts of sensitive data, an excessive focus on cybersecurity companies and states can provide a myopic perspective of the different sites of knowledge production about security (technical security experts, for example). I argue that such interplays and contestations over in-securities in cybersecurity are precisely what offers a space for rethinking individual and collective agency - that is, a conceptual ground for emerging epistemologies and imaginaries about (cyber)security to be addressed. In asking “who gets to be an expert?” the paper questions the “place” of practice and knowledge in cybersecurity. To do so, it engages in a theoretical exercise of understanding the role of expertise as a conceptual key for addressing different security imaginaries.
Author: Louise Marie Hurel (London School of Economics and Political Science) -
Cyber-diplomacy, as an international practice focused on the use of diplomatic resources and the performance of diplomatic functions to secure national interests in cyberspace, is fairly recent. Only in the last two decades have states focused on the need to use the traditional diplomatic means in discussions surrounding issues such as internet governance and cybersecurity. Within the context of cyber-diplomacy, practice theory allows us to consider the details of the emergence of this new diplomatic field, whilst being able to offer a broader understanding of how diplomats trained in the traditional practices of foreign policy making adjust to the novelty and (often) technical specificity of cyberspace-related issues. Adopting a Bourdieusian approach, this paper will explore the formation of a cyber-diplomatic field as well as the development of new habitus among diplomats. It will look at the idiosyncratic evolution of this practice within specific nation states, and of the overall developments at the international level. That will contribute to highlight both the novelty aspects of this field as well as how it integrates in the old structures of international relations (and within the general diplomatic pecking order). It will do so by particularly focusing on the evolution of cyber-diplomacy in Europe and North America.
Author: Andre Barrinha (University of Bath) -
This article explores the political stakes associated with the emergence of blockchain technologies as normative enablers of cybersecurity. More specifically, it analyzes how the distributed architecture and functioning of blockchain-based networks further dilute national sovereignty in cyberspace. Formed through protocols of distributed consensus, these networks facilitate decentralization and autonomy from a central authority. With no central authority or storage location, they distribute responsibility to each of its user-controlled nodes, the ‘ledgers’. As each ledger stores portions of the network and holds responsibility for its security, distributed configurations organize themselves as borderless and ‘core-less’ systems, constituting nevertheless the most secure approach to data protection. This distributed approach to security has proven to be of particular relevance for different domains of cybersecurity: the empowerment of IoT devices in the identification of anomalies (such as Byzantine faults); the delocalization and distribution of storage (clouds); and the creation of secure and trustworthy DNS. Through the allocation of authority to autonomous ledgers, blockchain-based cybersecurity extends political responsibility and agency beyond the conventional sites of the nation-state and the human. At the same time, it further delegates a traditional sovereign function to non-sovereign agents, both human and non-human. Drawing on critical approaches to the security/sovereignty nexus, this article problematizes the role of blockchain technologies by focusing on a) how distributed consensus functions as a new foundational norm of ‘the cyber’; b) how distributed cybersecurity ultimately deconstructs national sovereignty and the vision of a ‘national cyberspace’; and c) how the increasing authority of ledgers threatens the pluralist essence of the (inter)national system by prioritizing practices over political deliberation.
Author: Fabio Cristiano (Leiden University) -
Technological possibilities and constraints influence socio-economic processes and political contexts shape the evolution of digital technologies in turn. An important, previously understudied aspect of the Global Politics of Cyberspace is the dynamic interplay of cyber security markets and cyber security politics. Critical Security Studies are well aware of how crucial imaginaries of technologies are in giving rise to new danger discourses, whereby technologies are implicated in “creating” new threats as well as providing solutions against threats. What we do not understand well enough to date is how the logics of commercial security markets interact with those imaginaries, in specific, how security desires meet design and vice versa. This paper focuses on the practices of business actors that develop cyber security tools for a growth market of grand proportions. In specific, it explores the economic side of cyber-in-security through an analysis of the marketing strategies of “cyber security companies”. To that end, it will look at how cyber-threats are visualized, how companies try to make cybersecurity “sexy” and it will explore how these representations shape the pervasiveness of cyber-in-securities in politics.
Authors: Myriam Dunn Cavelty (Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich ) , Matthias Leese (Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich)* -
The gendered nature of cybersecurity is commonly observed by both scholars and practitioners, most often in calls to include/train/create more female cybersecurity professionals. Such well-meaning demands have various rationales, drawn from successive generations of feminist theory: that women have different (softer) skills to a default male cybersecurity professional, that diverse teams are more creative and robust, and so on. However, the simplicity of cybersecurity gender discourses is rarely acknowledged, and their problematic underlying assumptions – namely, a vaguely biological and non-intersectional liberal individualism - are challenged even more rarely. Although this conception of gender is not unique to cybersecurity, here it creates distinct dynamics due to the field’s growing political capital as the successor to and magnifier of deeply embedded military masculinities. This paper deconstructs prevalent concepts of gender in popular and ‘expert’ cybersecurity discourses and practices. It argues that both the meta-narrative of cybersecurity (premised on vulnerability, penetration, and leakage) and its technological ontology (from potent cyberweapons to agile detection technologies) can be read as destabilizing rather than reinforcing dominant gender hierarchies and divisions. The paper proposes a critical alternative that recognizes the co-production of gender identities through complex techno-social interactions, advocating a practical reorientation towards currently overlooked cybersecurity issues.
Authors: James Shires (Leiden University ) , Katharine Millar (LSE)
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Panel / The colonial making of contemporary international discourse Katie AdieSponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working GroupConvener: CPD Working groupChair: Nivi Manchanda (Queen Mary University of London)
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This paper offers a reflection on how race, racialisation and racism operate as key terms for mobilising persons of Christian faith in North America, both those who deny climate change, as well as those actively involved in environmental justice movements. Empirically, the paper draws on a three year collaborative inquiry project that studied the aspect of climate and cross in Canada and the United States. Using the lens of liberation theology, this paper looks at the ‘progressive eschatologies’ present within both these movements, and how they lend themselves itself to racialized, imperialistic narratives, often transgressing and transforming and transmutating the rhetoric of discourse on the political left, specifically the transforming and silencing of narratives of historic suffering. Within these movements, there is a focus on the world that is to come, rather than the world that is, and this focus automatically rejects a hermeneutic of justice (Peiris 1988). This paper argues that a lack of a justice narrative reinforces and recreates racialized discourses that already structure the Christian Social Imagination (Karter 2016). In taking up this absence of justice, this paper also argues for the need for a political theology of race.
Author: Anupama Ranawana (Oxford Brookes/Roehampton) -
Albeit widely employed in political discourse, military victory is both an opaque and undertheorized concept. Throughout history, different cultures and intellectual traditions have put forward diverse and competing notions of victory. Most importantly, victory has often acquired contrasting meanings for the victors and the vanquished. The lack of a broad theoretical conceptualisation notwithstanding, victory is capable of guiding policy-making, it directly affects our understanding of war and the conduct of hostilities, and influences post-conflict politics. This paper argues that by expanding our research horizon beyond Western cosmologies, a new, theoretically nuanced and significantly bolstered, understanding of victory emerges. Drawing on contributions from an array of different disciplines such as International Relations, War and Strategic Studies, Anthropology and History, the paper highlights the centrality of time and temporality to a thorough understanding of victory. After systematising and critically engaging with Western accounts of military victory, this paper problematises the dichotomizing power that Western thought classically attributes to victory – i.e. its conception as a clear-cut watershed separating war- from peace-time. Secondly, the paper turns to a theoretical discussion of the fundamental dimensions – political, social, and spiritual – that inform a temporally grounded understanding of victory. Lastly, the paper brings these theoretical intuitions into the colonial context. As a result, a renovated understanding of victory emerges, one in which triumph always entails a comprehensive reconstruction of the colonial Self.
Author: Mirko Palestrino (Queen Mary, University of London) -
International security analysts describe the “global security environment” as an increasingly de-territorialized one: global conditions are less contained by territorial states and their borders. In response, analysts’ concepts and methods are supposedly being de-territorialized as well, with a growing focus on complex global networks and flows. As critical security scholars have correctly highlighted, metaphors of networks and flows have tended to abstract from, rather than elucidate, the situated geographical conditions in relation to which processes of de-territorialization actually materialize. While others attribute this flaw to a failure to engage with geography at all, I show that security analysts’ applications of “network thinking” are actually highly attuned to geographical differences. I show, first, that these discourses are primarily concerned with differentiating desirable networks and flows from threatening ones. Second, I show that the principle heuristic for making these differentiations is a geographical imaginary that distinguishes “developed” from “underdeveloped” spaces and contexts. I situate this geographical imaginary in relation to 20th century securitizations of "tropical anarchy" (the security problematique applied to "uncivilized" spaces) as distinct from interstate anarchy (the security problematique applied to the 'civilized' "society of states"). Attention to these geographical imaginaries is important for recognizing the mechanisms through which racial ontologies of sovereignty and security continue to be reproduced in international security theory and practice and how this materializes in contemporary geographies of state violence.
Author: Casey McNeill (Fordham University) -
Analyzing emerging powers’ participation in multilateral institutions allows us to identify a number of assumptions about the conditionalities for power (influence) and the power of measurements in the composition of foreign policy agendas. These institutions, such as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and the World Bank, are considered by many scholars and analysts 'relevant' sources of knowledge and authority when it comes to the categorization and ranking of countries according to selected data. When the conditions for power are simply taken for granted, the debate about change or the future of our world order is limited to a narrow set of social, political, economic and/or development indicators and measurements. In this paper, I look at the notions of 'emergence', 'rise', or 'development' in the context of established and contested conditions necessary for the discursive constructions of a country's spatial and temporal positionings, considering that their very own condition as ‘emerging’ implies not simply a particular spatiality and temporality, but a spatio-temporal organization that may enable or not the perpetuation of foreign policy agendas that are aligned with racist and gendered power dynamics to the detriment of difference and plurality.
Author: Francine Rossone de Paula (Queen's University Belfast)
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Panel / Architecture and Politics in Africa: making, living and imagining identities through buildings - panel 2 Sandhill RoomSponsor: Africa and International Studies Working GroupConveners: Joanne Tomkinson (SOAS, University of London) , Daniel Mulugeta (SOAS, University of London) , Julia Gallagher (SOAS, University of London)Chair: Daniel Mulugeta (SOAS, University of London)
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This paper provides a situated examination of two of the most influential theories of international relations in Africa – extraversion and gatekeeping (or the ‘gatekeeper state’). It provides a novel reading of these theories refracted through the study of two of the continent’s international airports – Bole International in Ethiopia and Kotoka International Ghana – each located in countries with very different historical patterns of international integration. It argues that despite these airports being quite literal gateways, mediating between each country and the outside world, and situated at the intersection of national and international economies, in neither country do the political and economic activities located around the airport vindicate either Bayart or Cooper’s theorisations of Africa’s international relations. Instead a rather more complex story emerges in which the two international ‘gates’ under study have not been used simply to sustain and benefit from adverse terms of international integration. Rather these ‘gates’ have, in different ways, been used to rewrite and remake each country’s place in the world and wider continent, at the same time as driving the redrawing of the map of its domestic territorial relations through the infrastructure they provide. Both factors, it is argued, have significant implications for Ethiopian and Ghanaian state-building efforts which run counter to the extraversion and gatekeeping hypotheses. It is for this reason that the paper proposes these airports as sites of gatemaking rather than gatekeeking – a framework which not only foregrounds the agency of African elites but also demonstrates how this agency has been used not simply to sustain – but instead to seek to challenge – Africa’s subordinate terms of international incorporation.
Author: Joanne Tomkinson (SOAS, University of London) -
In his 1971 inaugural speech, the Asantehene (King of Asante), Opoku Ware II, proposed the reconstruction of the traditional Asante palace, which was demolished in 1874 when the British colonial forces attacked the “national” capital, Kumase. The aftermath of the attack witnessed the British attempt to alter and reinvent the architectural landscape of the city, beginning with the construction of a European self-contained house to serve as the palace of the Asante kingdom in 1925. This paper combines rhetorical analysis of the inaugural speech with a close examination of the official residence of the Asantehene to understand how the palace historically functioned as the setting for the performance of the local art of governance. By reading along and against the grain of the king’s speech, I use the physical structures of the palace as framework to understand the conservative nature of the architectural landscape of Kumase. In doing so, I offer a response to Louis Nelson, who in a social history of architecture in Jamaica, appealed to historians to generate narratives that embody events with places where they occurred. Thus, by focusing on the speech, I demonstrate the entangled relationship between past events and the places where they occurred in an attempt to unravel broader themes on Asante architectural and political history. Ultimately, this paper will help us understand the position of Kumase within the imagined and real geopolitical landscape of contemporary Ghana and within the context of global history of resistance to empire.
Author: Tony Yeboah (Yale University) -
This paper explores Freedom Park in Lagos, developed on the site of Broad Street Prison, as a form of overwriting rather than conserving. The transformation of this previously carceral space into Freedom Park it is argued narrates Nigeria’s past in terms of projecting its future. Broad Street prison was the first built by the British during colonial era. The prison was mainly demolished in 1979, and by the 1990s was wasteland used for dumping rubbish, the transformation occurred in the context of architects being concerned about the loss of historical buildings on Lagos Island. Since its regeneration, timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Nigeria’s independence in 2010, it has become a key arts venue and houses a museum on site. It also houses cafes and food stalls.
This paper, based on ethnographic and interview research, explores how the space is inhabited, utilised and understood, how the current architecture and museum exhibitions write this history in particular ways for particular audiences. The paper argues how the telling of the story of the park as one of colonial oppression and Nigerian regeneration creates a hopeful narrative arc, reinforced by the prosperity on display at the park, which is about curating Nigeria’s future as much as its past.
Author: Routley Laura (Newcastle University) -
In the past two decades, a particular focus by China (PRC) has been the financing and building of new parliaments for African countries. The involvement of the PRC and Chinese construction firms in these parliament buildings include design, construction, furnishing and maintenance. In other words, China is engaged in an enterprise of donating complete parliament buildings to African countries. Upon completion, the PRC sends a senior official to symbolically handover the building to the beneficiary government. This marked interest by China in African Parliaments read together with recipient states’ acquiescence to receiving as gifts such symbolic buildings that are ultimately tied to national identity raises new questions critical in understanding contemporary China-Africa relations. In this paper, I leverage the phenomenon of China funded parliament buildings in Africa as a site of politics to explore the manifestation and the extent of African agency in China-Africa relations. Concurrently, I also discuss the motivations for China’s unusual interest in Africa’s legislative political institutions and how this is shaping elite and popular perceptions on China’s long-range foreign policy strategy in Africa. I do so through an ethnographic study of Chinese funded parliamentary buildings in Lesotho, Malawi and Zimbabwe. I use data collected through elite interviews, focus groups, document review, non-participant observation and photography.
Author: Innocent Batsani Ncube (SOAS, University of London)
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Panel / Bringing War Studies into the 21st Century Swan RoomSponsor: War Studies Working GroupConvener: Vincent Keating (University of Southern Denmark)Chair: Katharine Wright (Newcastle University)
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Where are European advanced military drones? Despite the large sums of resources invested into research and development projects over the past fifteen years, European countries continue to depend on the imports of the American, and to a lesser extent Israeli, advanced military UAV technology. This paper looks at the late arrival of European countries in the business of advanced military UAVs by analyzing the interplay of political, strategic, economic, industrial, and technological factors. It then zooms in on the inclusion-exclusion dynamics and rivalry patterns among the main European industrial players on the defense market. The paper argues that the lack of high-level political and military interest in prioritizing drones in the past resulted in a number of competing drone projects in Europe. Ultimately, the formation of various drone clubs explains why European countries have been struggling to move from the experimental development of demonstrators and prototypes into the operational and production stage of an indigenous European advanced drone.
Author: Dominika Kunertova (Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark) -
The reporting of civilian casualty figures is fraught with uncertainty and incongruities, despite attracting substantial political and media focus. Even though the campaign of the Global Coalition against the Islamic State has all the trappings of legality and legitimacy, it became mired in a CIVCAS controversy. Based on a unique dataset, this article investigates the connections between the character of Western military power and the civilian casualties reported for the Coalition’s airstrikes. By combining the number of sorties with monthly civilian casualty reports reported by the Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, and contrasting those to Airwars’ civilian harm reports, the dataset provides two unique insights: firstly, how the changing character of war affects the number of civilian casualties; and secondly, how it affects the discrepancies in reporting. The paper argues that CIVCAS reporting and the uncovered discrepancies are caused by a disconnect between the political and military level of the Coalition’s strategy in contemporary warfare, and an ineptitude to navigate the contemporary normative framework for armed conflict.
Authors: Amelie Theussen (Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark) , Sten Rynning (Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark) -
The theorization of emotions and their use as an analytical category has become much more commonplace in the international relations literature. Through the efforts of scholars working on these topics, we now understand that emotions have been a neglected category within the field and that their inclusion helps us to understand critical moments in the making of foreign policy. The purpose of this paper, however, is to probe the boundaries of what can be considered an emotion through the illustration of two concepts generally conceptualized as emotions that play central roles in War Studies: trust and revenge. We argue that it is difficult to proclaim that these two phenomena are emotions, but they are rather conflated as emotions by their emotional precursors or consequences. As such, we show that it might be misleading to reduce revenge and trust to the properties commonly associated with emotions in the literature. In making this argument, we therefore seek to provide a theoretical clarification over what might be considered an emotion in order to focus and refine this debate, and show why this matters to the study of war and conflict.
Authors: Vincent Charles Keating (University of Southern Denmark) , Marie Robin (Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas and Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark) -
This paper discusses how key actors in the EU system navigate the multiple possible normative references shaping rationales for the protection of civilians in conflict and therefore affecting resource mobilization and operational planning. Evidence exists that policy frameworks dealing with civilian protection have been ‘localized’ (Zimmermann 2016; Zwingel 2012) by the EU. For example, we know that the EU has imported ‘human security’ from the UN (Martin and Owen 2010) and the ‘comprehensive approach’ from NATO (De Franco and Rynning 2016; Drent 2011; Gross 2008) and reshaped them substantially to fit its own structure and culture. We also know that the EU has developed its own R2P implementation plan (Brockmeier et al. 2014; De Franco et al. 2015; De Franco and Rodt 2016; Gottwald 2012). This paper goes a step further and clarifies how EU’s officials and diplomats participate in practices where they not only adopt and adapt but also combine different protective frameworks and ultimately reify different logics of protection. To elucidate how practices constitute different rationales and prescriptions (and vice versa), the paper studies different institutional settings, actors (within the institutional settings, i.e. EU officials and Member States representatives) and time/crises (Mali and the migrant crisis).
Author: Chiara de Franco (Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark) -
Technological development has always been a leading cause of military change, affecting not only how warfare is conducted, but also the sociology of military organizations. This paper examines the effect of the adoption of AI-enabled weapon systems by the United States Armed Forces on the professional ethos of military personnel. From missile detection software, to human-machine teams and “killer robots”, different levels of autonomy and of personnel’s proximity to the weapon systems can impact military professionals’ ethos and understanding of their duties. The military personnel’s reaction to the adoption of these technologies can have broader implications on a number of areas, such as recruitment processes, organizational change, and the possible success or failure of the adoption of new technologies by military institutions. Building on practice theory and the concept of professionalism, the paper examines the boundaries that delimitate military professionals from civilians, how the professional ethos is constructed and reified in military institutions through practices, and the ways USAF personnel understand their own profession and its duties. It argues that the threat felt by military professionals is related to two key variables: the level of technical autonomy used, and the proximity of a military professional to the weapon or platform.
Author: Vicky Karyoti (Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark)
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Panel / Foreign Policy and Political Communication Dobson RoomSponsor: Foreign Policy Working GroupConvener: FPWG Working groupChair: Graeme Davies (University of York)
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In this paper we examine how China’s strategic narratives are represented in major British and American newspapers. We create and analyse a new dataset to demonstrate that there is significant resistance in US and UK media outlets to China’s attempts to improve its image abroad. We find that increasing economic links with China are associated with security risks in news media discourse. Assessments of Chinese policy strategies are most negatively examined through security lenses; even when economic opportunities are identified we find that Chinese actors are still viewed as untrustworthy partners. Major strategic projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative rather than being seen as an opportunity for increased cooperation between Western states and China are represented as a possible threat to the established international order, in the form of new transnational networks that increase Western vulnerability to Chinese coercion or “debt trap” diplomacy that contravenes international development norms.
Authors: Kingsley Edney (University of Leeds) , Graeme Davies (University of York) -
Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFAs) have traditionally been regarded as institutions that face the world with their backs to the nation. It is thus not surprising that digital technologies such as social media were originally employed by diplomats to communicate with foreign populations. However, recent studies suggest that that much of digital diplomacy is actually domestic diplomacy, as MFAs launch smartphone applications and social media campaigns that target the national citizenry. Diplomats’ growing use of social media to target the domestic population, also referred to as domestic digital diplomacy, suggests that MFAs may now use social media to create a prism through which domestic audiences can make sense of the world around them and their nation’s role in that world. Therefore, the emergence of domestic digital diplomacy could represent an important shift in the conduct of international relations as diplomats actively seek to shape their citizens’ worldviews, beliefs, values and perceptions of local and global events. Even more importantly, diplomats may now use social media to rally support for a nation’s foreign policies. Despite the emergence of domestic digital diplomacy, few studies have examined how MFAs target their national citizenry and how they create a prism through which domestic audiences can make sense of the world. This is a substantial gap as citizens may be unable to make sense of today’s world which seems to be in a perpetual state of crisis. Diplomats’ practice of domestic digital diplomacy may especially be evident in countries which have experienced political shocks or who have decided to alter their foreign policy in a profound way. For it is in these instances, when a nation’s future is riddled with uncertainty, that MFAs may seek to interpret the world for their citizens.
This study sought to examine diplomats’ new practice of domestic digital diplomacy. To do so, it evaluated 100 images shared on Twitter by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in December of 2016. This case study was selected as it was assumed that the FCO would be engulfed in the task of helping British citizens make sense of the UK’s place in the world following the Brexit referendum. Images were analyzed given that diplomats are now visual narrators. Indeed, diplomats share a host of images on social media through which they narrate a nation’s policies and actions on the world stage.
Using Barthes’s semiotic approach to image analysis, this study found that the FCO relied on iconic images, or images that resonated with iconic moments in British history, to narrate Britain’s role in a post-Brexit world. Specifically, the FCO employed images that resonated visually with images of World War II such as the Blitz, the evacuation from Dunkirk and the Home Guard. In this manner, the FCO used World War II as a historic template through which the present world may be understood. Iconic images were used to narrate the UK’s foreign policies, in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Asia as well as the UK’s actions in global arenas such as the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Iconic images were also used to explain foreign crises such as the Syrian Civil War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the paralysis in the UN Security Council.
Author: Ilan Manor (The University of Oxford) -
How can IR scholars make sense of Donald Trump? There is a widespread suspicion that the discipline’s existing categories are inadequate to the task, manifested in claims that Trump’s ascendancy to high office is symptomatic of various crises: of liberal internationalism (Ikenberry, 2018), American hegemony (Stokes, 2018; Nye, 2019), and/or grand strategy (Reich & Dombrowski, 2017). These analyses are themselves indicative of a general uncertainty regarding how to meet the challenge that Trump’s personality and style pose to established ways of thinking about world politics. In this paper, we seek to make sense of Trump as an actor in international affairs by considering his place within popular culture, and in particular his personal and professional association with the performed, theatrical wrestling staged by organisations like World Wrestling Entertainment. Drawing on Roland Barthes’ Mythologies (1972), we suggest that contemporary pro wrestling offers important insights into Trump’s method and style of foreign policy. Introducing concepts like ‘heat’, ‘the heel’ and ‘cutting a promo’, we suggest that wrestling can help to explain three aspects of Trump’s approach to politics that existing theories and lenses are poorly-equipped to explain or identify. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of our analysis for foreign policy leadership on the world stage, drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘grotesque power’ (2003) to suggest that the ‘shamelessness’ that Judith Butler (2019) identifies at the heart of Trump’s public performances is not entirely without political precedent.
Authors: Alister Wedderburn (Australian National University/University of Glasgow) , Benjamin Day (Australian National University)* -
This interdisciplinary paper aims to examine Russian foreign policy agenda through news coverage of the Russian state-funded international broadcaster RT (formerly Russia Today), often accused by journalists and foreign politicians of being the country’s foreign policy tool and ‘propaganda machine’. Employing media and journalism studies as well as scholarly writing on international politics, public diplomacy, and propaganda the study aims to:
1) explain in what degree the channel acts as a public diplomacy outlet for Russia by analysing the narratives and messages and comparing them with narratives and messages of the official Russian foreign policy documentation;
2) analyse the differences and similarities in narratives and messages sent out to two distinct audiences by studying the channel’s output in Russian and English languages (where Russian content is directed at Russian speakers abroad, including first of all citizens of former Soviet states), and trace these discrepancies and overlaps to the Russian foreign policy agenda towards different groups;
3) analyse how the narratives and messages that do not match the official Russian foreign policy agenda fit into the overall narratives and messages, and why.Thus the study aims to add to the understanding of the relationship between foreign policy and international broadcasting as a form of public diplomacy and further to advance the understanding of Russian foreign policy and the ways in which it is understood by scholars and practitioners. It also argues for a wider use of media and journalism theory in studies of public diplomacy.
This paper uses both quantitative (content analysis) and qualitative (textual analysis and document analysis) methods and is a part of my PhD thesis at which I am now preparing to submit for examination at City, University of London.
Author: Aleksandra Raspopina (City, University of London) -
The paper seeks to analyse, through Brazilian government’s official documents and diplomatic telegrams, the process of building a strategic partnership between Brazil and the Kingdom. This process began in 1995, after Brazil's political and economic stabilisation, but gained momentum from 2003 onwards, driven by Lula's international popularity and Brazil's rise as an emerging power. On the other hand, this research also seeks to understand how the symbolic dimension of this mechanism of international cooperation can communicate political messages. Thus, the central idea is that this symbolic dimension can be politically instrumentalised and therefore incorporated into a strategy of cultural diplomacy. Based on this framework, the research argues that during Lula's government, Brazil not only deepened its strategic partnership with the UK but changed its terms in favour of Brazilian interests. It demonstrates that this was due to Celso Amorim's "bold and active" foreign policy, together with the impact of the symbolic dimension of the Brazil-UK strategic partnership. Finally, this research contributes to the field of International Relations in three ways. Firstly, by presenting an original empirical study of the Brazil-UK strategic partnership case. Secondly, by proposing a broader reflection on the practice of cultural diplomacy, by analyzing the symbolic dimension of strategic partnerships as a conduit for cultural diplomacy initiatives. Thirdly, by producing it from a Brazilian perspective.
Author: Marcello de Souza Freitas (Aberystwyth University)
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Panel / Identity, Performativity and Representation CarilolSponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working GroupConvener: PPWG Working groupChair: Ciara McHugh (Queen's University Belfast)
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Difference is sometimes taken as a natural fact of (international) life, yet difference can also be seen as the result of practices of ‘distancing’ designed to create a coherent ‘us’ opposed to external, distant and clearly separated ‘Others’. In this paper, I propose to look at the portrayal by France and the United Kingdom of their citizens fighting for ISIS in Syria and Iraq. These citizens occupy an ambiguous position, still being like ‘us’ yet also being portrayed as different. As such, the construction of their difference is particularly interesting as it illustrates the difficulties of creating a coherent sense of identity – these ‘terrorists’ being essentially Other yet also sharing some similarity with ‘us’. The case of these Western ISIS fighters is thus important as the presence of these individuals raises difficult questions for the British and French authorities (in particular around the protection they should be offered, whether they should retain their citizenship, where they should be judged and the rights of children born of these ‘foreign’ fighters). Caught between their desire and obligation to defend citizens (who are like ‘us’) and the distancing from these ‘radical terrorist Others’, the policy responses of the British and French governments have been hesitant and shifting. The objective of this paper is to trace how a specific ‘Othering’ of these Western fighters has taken place using policy sources (political declarations, legislation and parliamentary debates) as well as interviews with French and British civil servants. Overall, the paper will offer a reflection on the creation of difference and the way identity (‘we’) relates to difference (‘them’), with a particular emphasis on the way identity depends on the constant exclusion of difference for its reproduction.
Author: Xavier Mathieu (University of Liverpool) -
Utilizing securitization theory, this paper conceptualizes the invocation of ‘isolationism’ in US foreign policy discourse during the Vietnam War as a performative security discourse - a tangle of multiple interwoven processes and practices. These performative, often literally self-effacing, security practices reproduced, constituted, and historicized various aspects of US identity and foreign policy through the mechanism of threat construction.
During the Nixon administration, isolationism was presented as a threat. Using the language of securitization theory: isolationism was constructed as an existential threat to the existence of the US. That is, the administration securitized the issue via performative security speech acts.
At the onset of the Cold War, the ‘debts’ of US WWII sacrifice, often portrayed as ‘lessons’, were ‘honored’ with prescribed foreign policy approaches: international engagement, focused on supporting allies and confronting (communist) aggression. Beginning in 1969, the Nixon administration began recasting this approach as an ‘overextension’ that could cause the US to rapidly regress to existentially threatening isolationism. Not only did the usage of isolationism discourse increase during the Nixon administration, but was also directed at both Senators accepted as ‘internationalist’ and heretofore ‘traditional’ foreign policy approaches.
Drawing on Nietzsche (1998) and Derrida (1986), this paper theorizes that securitizations referencing ‘historical foundations’ – or sacrifices in honor of such foundations (such as isolationism discourse) - operate in a manner similar to Derrida’s ‘founding acts’. The performative security speech act both constructs itself and functions as its own constative, a priori context. This context draws on elements of existing identity and aspects of a foundational past (cf. Derrida, 1986; Honig, 1991; Der Derian, 1995; Nietzsche, 1998).
Through the process of constructing a threat, there is an opportunity to modify national concepts of identity, both in terms of what are appropriate foreign policy objectives, and what national past is presented as true – which in turn justifies these foreign policy approaches. The Nixon administration appeared to both acknowledge and supplement traditional post-war US identities through an amalgamation of foreign policy-making and isolationism security discourse. This was undertaken to incorporate into the national identity sacrifices (foreign and domestic) incurred because of Vietnam, all in aid of promoting Nixon’s foreign policy approach.
This paper seeks to explore the (re)production of identity through the processes of performative security discourses, in the context of foreign policy and security construction. Security speech acts designate the limits of a given order by constructing existential threats that both define what is under threat (i.e. the self) and what the given order is unable to deal with. This act, this rupture “implies a claim to enact new possibilities of right and wrong” (Huysmans, 2011: 374).
By theorizing the use of isolationist security discourse during the Nixon administration as indicative of such a rupture, this paper proposes to understand the performative power of security discourses to constitute identity, foreign policies, security, and the ‘international’ itself.
Author: Daniel Mobley (University of Edinburgh) -
Beyond their ideological beliefs, one of the most common epithets given to populist actors throughout the world is that they are authentic, or at least more authentic than other politicians. Drawing on the literature in theatre and performance studies, this paper will firstly develop the relationship between the concept of authenticity and that of political performances, showcasing the complex need for such performances to conceal their own genesis and artificiality in order to appear convincing to their audience. In a second time, following the insights of the stylistic approach to populism, this paper will argue that transgression, that is the voluntary violation of socio-cultural norms, is the central strategy used by populist actors to create the illusion of authenticity, subsequently demonstrating the purposes of transgressing implicit rules of political conduct, notably that of highlighting the disconnect between other politicians and ordinary citizens. Finally, this paper will discuss the limits and paradoxical nature of transgression as a performative strategy to produce authenticity. Indeed, revealing the artificial features of the political performances of one’s opponents is a double-edged sword as it highlights the artificiality all forms of political performances, including their own.
Author: Theo Aiolfi (University of Warwick) -
Conflict between Catalonia and Spain has made the headlines of leading newspapers repeatedly over the past years. Considered a thorny issue, much can be used as an argument - or counter-argument - from the Spanish and Catalan sides depending on what is considered generally true, or valid. Neither is essentially pure, unmixed, genuine. In fact, much of what it means to be Catalan or Spanish could be regarded as mutually constitutive (starting from the concepts of nationalism and identity themselves). Thus, one concept cannot be conceived in the absence of the other: they actually produce and are reproduced by the other, like in a play of mirrors, in which meaning is somehow ‘moisty’, blurred, escaping clear-cut definitions.
Underlying notions of being Catalan or Spanish are concepts such as identity, nation, community, borders, and others alike. Permeating the classification, however, lies the violence of favouring one term over the other, in an arbitrary process in which identity is privileged over alterity, essence over appearance, inside over outside.
In the attempt to broaden the scope of discussion, this paper sets from Derrida’s notions of différance, trace, spectre, and deconstruction to analyse the current situation in Catalonia by casting a deconstructive look on both Catalan and Spanish identities. It attempts to investigate how they are constituted and also trace further implications of the continuation of this division, in social and political terms.
Author: Daniel Pedersoli
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Roundtable / Internationalisation and the challenge to academic freedom: between authoritarian control and the logic of the market History Room
As the ‘internationalisation’ of higher education generates increased partnerships in both education and research between Western institutions and those in autocracies, academic freedom is put at risk. High-profile attention has focused on researchers detained or killed in fieldwork. However, there are many more academics at risk of detention or worse who are ordinarily employed in universities under an authoritarian state. Foreign campuses in the Middle East and China are not immune from restrictions. Chinese, Russian, Turkish and Central Asian governments have cracked down in various ways on their academics and students, especially those from minority groups. Moreover, the response of universities and their representative bodies in the UK has been silence, obfuscation or denial of the problem, implying that market for students and income from autocracies makes them unwilling to defend academic freedom. University ethics committees are rarely prepared to step into these debates, other than in prohibiting fieldwork. In the roundtable six UK-based academics with experience of universities in China, Russia, Turkey and Central Asia will address these questions. What do we mean by ‘academic freedom’ and how is it maintained? What can IR academics do to show solidarity with colleagues who are at risk from and in autocracies (both on our campuses and overseas)? What may we do to mitigate the risks generated by internationalisation? How do we include scholars from autocracies without increasing surveillance of our work, heightening risks to them, and reducing academic freedom? What is the value of a sector-wide code of conduct (such as that proposed by Human Rights Watch with respect to China in 2019) or targeted academic boycotts (such as proposed by Turkish Academics for Peace in 2017)?
Sponsor: Russian and Eurasian Security Working GroupChair: Lee Jones (QMUL)Participants: Yeşim Yaprak Yıldız (Goldsmiths, University of London) , Lee Jones (QMUL) , Catherine Owen (University of Exeter) , Katarzyna Kaczmarska (University of Edinburgh) , Bahar Baser (Coventry University) , John Heathershaw (University of Exeter) -
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Panel / Localisation and narrowing of civil spaces: moral and practical implications Stephenson RoomSponsor: Non-Governmental Organisations Working GroupConvener: Angela CrackChair: Angela Crack
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The aftermath of the Westgate terrorist attack in Kenya in 2013, steered changes in the countering terrorism (CT) discourse with swift government responses leading to strengthening legislations on CT, closing space for dissent and advocacy against government CT measures, and regulating civil society organizations in the CT space. Responses on civil societies included freezing accounts of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), labeling CSOs as funding or aiding terrorism and blaming CSOs as disrupting the government-led counter-terrorism initiatives led to the narrowing of the CSO space. Based on in-depth interviews with key informants from twenty-two CSOs working on CVE and eighteen community leaders, the chapter intends to investigate the implications of the securitization of the civil society space in countering violent extremism in Kenya. The article traces the evolution of securitization of the CSO space; the intersection of global politics in shaping the Counterterrorism (CT) discourse with the War on Terror in Kenya, donor alignment with government policies and vice versa; the causes for and against the securitization wave; the push for softer approaches – Prevention/Countering Violent Extremism; and, the resulting division in the civil society organizations within the CT realm.
Author: Fathima Azmiya Badurdeen (Technical University of Mombasa) -
Scholars have commonly defined INGOs by their ‘ascribed’ moral quality deriving from the noble causes they advocate. Nevertheless, this has been questioned due to growing INGOs professionalization exemplified in recruiting professionals and prioritising the relationship between their donors and beneficiaries whilst neglecting wider publics, whether card-carrying or unaffiliated supporters whose altruistic virtue represents the ‘moral backbone’ of any organizations relying on donations, volunteers and media image. This oversight risks perpetuating power-relations which sideline ‘wider publics’ as passive actors in guiding INGOs’ working vision and undermines their moral quality. Meanwhile, the ‘practice turn’ in IR unearthed pragmatism as a method of inquiry, emphasising the role of individuals’ moral conditions as guarantors of institutional processes by tracing the social conditions that permeate their social experiences, namely habituated and reflexive forms of action in imagining their practical implications. This questions how pragmatism can rediscover INGOs’ moral quality. By unpacking Dewey’s pragmatism, this paper argues that pragmatism can inform INGOs’ moral quality by mapping individuals’ social experiences of ethical development. Against revelations of normalised workplace abuse, malpractice and exclusion, it becomes paramount to apply pragmatism to integrate ‘wider publics’ when seeking to define INGOs’ moral quality and their broader normative role in international relations.
Author: Amandine Hostein (University of Portsmouth) -
This paper addresses the civil conflict in Cameroon, which is under-investigated and under-reported internationally. Since independence from colonial rule in 1961, the minority anglophone population of Cameroon has been subjected to discriminatory treatment, including several cases of torture confirmed by the United Nations. In 2016, these issues erupted into the current civil conflict. Since then, activities in the anglophone regions, such as attendance at school, legal hearings, and local markets, have been severely restricted. Harrowing photographs of human rights abuses and reports of state violence are emerging regularly. Since 2016, 530,000 anglophone Cameroonians are estimated to have been displaced by ongoing violence between the state and separatist movements. Drawing on fieldwork interviews conducted in mid-2020 and adopting a post-colonial framework, this paper analyses the narratives of marginalised civil society representatives and activists in Cameroon and argues that, in the face of extreme levels of pressure, they have become increasingly resilient in novel ways. The paper then goes on to evaluate trusting relationships between key actors and the drivers behind their interaction. Finally, the paper examines the withdrawal and remoteness of Western liberal actors from the context and the meaning of this for the international human rights regime and for Cameroon.
Authors: Willis Roxana (University of Oxford)* , Algar-Faria Gilberto (University of Oxford) -
Throughout World history, domestic groups have appealed to international actors in the process of realising their demands. After the 1990s, the literature on social movements and international relations viewed this interaction to be heavily influenced by the role of globalisation and the translation of norms empowering domestic actors. However, while this literature has mapped out the reasons for successes and failures by focusing on network density, strength and functioning, it has neglected how the international system can shape and restrict the path of the outcome or how campaign strategies can backfire. This paper, by taking the internationalised anti-regime campaign in Venezuela from 2017 to 2019 as a case study, aims to contribute to the literature that explains the outcomes of transnational campaigns. It is specifically investigates how the international opportunity structure that this campaign operates in can constrain or empower the realisation of movement goals. In order to achieve this, the paper explores the framing strategies of the campaign by tracing how frames are transferred from advocacy networks to international institutions, and subsequently the responses leading to a certain the outcome.
Author: Begum Zorlu (PhD Student) -
This article examines the circumstances under which a country will accept and internalize, or reject, the importation of democratic norms from an external actor. It specifically focuses on the roles played by civil society organizations in Hungary and the Czech Republic in internalizing the norms of the European Union, both during and after their periods of accession to the EU. Traditionally, much of the research on democratization and norm internalization assumes that the more engaged and developed civil society networks in a country are, the more likely it will be that that country will successfully democratize and/or internalize the transmitted norms. This article problematizes this assumption by arguing that in the case of Hungary and the Czech Republic, the opposite is more likely true: that the emergence of a large and well developed civil society network in Hungary in 2002 actively impeded the internalization of the norms transmitted by the EU, thus facilitating the country’s authoritarian turn in 2010. In contrast, the weakness and comparative irrelevance of Czech civil society in the 1990s and 2000s has contributed to (an admittedly tenuous and fragile) stabilization of the transmitted norms in the country.
Author: Michael Toomey (University of Reading)
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Panel / Materiality of Power and Gender Pandon RoomSponsor: Gendering International Relations Working GroupConvener: Ali Bilgic (Loughborough University)Chair: Alice Cree (Newcastle University)Discussant: Alice Cree (Newcastle University)
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Medellín's approach to urban development, within a historical setting of extreme violence, is widely celebrated for innovation in planning and managing a challenging urban environment. In acknowledging institutions, such as the local government, as significant sites for that reflect and (re)production of gender norms (Mackay and Krook, 2011; Kenny, 2014), they also become key sites of potential change and transformation. In a government that is celebrated as having facilitated transformational change, questioning the incorporation and treatment of gender within the urban development agenda is significant. Medellín champions their adoption of gender mainstreaming, but in outlining how gender and gender relations are framed in policy and across the local government, this paper shows that a lack of tools and a coherent understanding across the institution leads to a fragmented incorporation and continued separation of gender as a particular concern left to sympathetic individuals and gender experts. In particular, the separation of gender-based violence as distinct from the wider context of violence further highlights the relegation of women, and gender, from the city's security priorities, in ways that undermine the broader discussion of urban transformation.
Author: Alexandra Young -
This paper interrogates how violent extremism is understood and experienced by women at local community level in Kenya using body mapping. Body mapping is a form of embodied storytelling that allows the participants to reflect on experiences, thoughts and feelings physically through the body, visually through the arts, verbally through storytelling and relationally with the other participants and the researcher (Dew, Smith, Collings, and Dillon Savage 2018). Our study revealed that for many women, violent extremism is an everyday phenomenon experienced primarily in the private sphere in the form of female genital mutilation, forced early marriages, denial of education, and domestic violence. Our research participants considered gender based violence and entrenched gender inequality as a manifestation of violent extremism and the driver of this phenomenon. Yet, in Kenya, the government frames violent extremism using a top down, state-centered and male-shaped approach that prioritizes the public over the private sphere making women’s experiences of violence and inequality invisible. Based on our findings we argue that in order to tackle violent extremism we need to redefine this concept from a gender perspective in a way that makes women’s experiences of violence and insecurity a central element.
Author: sahla sahla aroussi (Coventry University) -
Whether in response to the threat of global terrorism or ‘illegal’ migration, cities across the Global North and South are experiencing an unprecedented trend toward national securitisation, as nation states embark upon territorial redrawing strategies of governance designed to mitigate the threats posed by our internationally turbulent era. Techniques of fortification are materially and metaphorically redrawing geopolitical lines for those living in borderland cities, socially, culturally and politically. Uniquely, this paper examines creative body-centred encounters with inter/national urban border security and the conspicuously unequal strategies mobilised to manage, mitigate, and deter human mobilities. More specifically, I draw upon dance choreography created with El Paso Ballet Theatre to examine how the performing arts might work aesthetically and political with material and imaginative securityscapes, and how the mobile dancing body in particular (significant in a landscape designed to deny movement) can deconstruct wider geopolitics relations. First, I draw upon a critically creative dance methodology termed the choreographers notebook to examine how dancing bodies can tell novel stories of everyday urban im/mobilities and open visceral accounts of the multifaceted violences of securitisation. Against widespread governmental failures, judicial ambivalence and racism, I argue, other political frames are precisely necessary. Second, I bring together Foucault’s seminal writings on biopolitics with Andrea Lepecki’s account of choreopolitics in order to extend theorisations of the biopolitics of the border including as an aesthetic regime and as performance. In bringing the urban securitised borderscapes literature and feminist scholarship on everyday geopolitics and the body into conversation with mounting scholarship on creativity, this paper sets agendas for political performances of urban contestation in interrogating, and in turn responding to, contemporary practices/policies of international securitisation.
Author: Charlotte Veal (Newcastle University) -
The materiality of (living, dead and surviving) bodies has been highlighted as a productive element of resistance against gender violence in Latin America. According to De Souza (2019), “claiming back the situatedness and positionality of bodies has allowed feminists to defy the mind/body dualism that structures most of Western philosophy and retrieve the centrality of questions of gender, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity, nationality and so on to the structuring of the political” (p.91). While acknowledging the potential of feminist solidarities to disrupt and open up the political space to other worlds, this article aims at furthering the debate by also considering the precarity of these bodies’ geopolitical positions. The fact that certain bodies are exposed and/or continuously treated as exceeding dominant political structures may be read through their inherent potential for disruption and politicization. However, their exposure and visibility are themselves symptoms of their ‘dislocation’ from dominant representations / expectations of presence in ‘space’. In other words, these bodies exceed the “map” and they are seen particularly because they are conceived as ‘out of place’. Recognition through dislocation often imposes its own text inhibiting any other texts written in/expressed through these bodies to be read/heard. Drawing on the literature on feminist geopolitics and decolonial feminism, this paper aims at exploring obstacles and subjective boundaries imposed on ‘subaltern’ bodies by geopolitical representations, asking after the conditions for gendered geographies of visibility, recognition and agency.
*De Souza, Natália. (2019). When the Body Speaks (to) the Political: Feminist Activism in Latin America and the Quest for Alternative Democratic Futures. Contexto Internacional. 41. 89-112. 10.1590/s0102-8529.2019410100005.
Author: Francine Rossone de Paula (Queen's University Belfast) -
This paper traces the evolution and the effects of the “pacification” strategy that has been rolled out over the last decade in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. It problematizes from a critical feminist security studies perspective (inter alia Wibben 2011, 2018; Sjoberg & Jillian 2010) the militarised approach that the Brazilian state has adopted whilst trying to deal with urban poverty, racial segregation and criminal violence within the favelas.
This paper examines the structural consequences of inequality and criminality and the increasing marginalization of favela residents that have stemmed from Brazil’s increasing Neo-Liberal economic policies (Wacquant 2014) and examines the how these have been dealt with, and thus aggravated by, the growing militarisation of policing operations conducted amongst the residents of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro often in the guise of the war on drugs/crime (Oosterbaan & Wijk 2015).
Whilst the state’s security apparatuses have tried to conduct “pacification” operations through the Police Pacification Units in order to reduce criminality and claim back such “ungoverned” spaces by moving the state’s military police away from war-oriented to community based policing (Siman & Santos 2018), this paper shows how the increasing adoption of urban warfare tactics to the detriment of community-based policing initiatives and the disinterest in implementing any serious socio-economic regeneration projects within the favelas (Salem 2017), have strengthened the gendered nature (Amar 2013; Wilding 2010) that such “punitive containment” (Wacquant 2008) measures have had on the racially and socio-economically marginalised favela residents (Stern 2006).
The paper will also show how such gendered and racialised measures have augmented rather than diminished the segregation between favela residents and the rest of the city and have actually increased the insecurity of (particularly women and transgender) favela residents in the name of re-masculinised conceptualisations and daily practices associated with the state's security measures.
Author: Sergio Catignani (University of Exeter)
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Panel / Micro-level resolution in peace and conflict Collingwood RoomSponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working GroupConvener: Peacekeeping and peacebuilding Working group (BISA)Chair: Jennifer Giblin (University of Nottingham)Discussant: Peacekeeping and peacebuilding Working group (BISA)
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The 2009 amnesty offer to militant groups in the Niger Delta by the government of Nigeria following three decades of oil-related conflict seem to have achieved relative peace. However, a recent resurgence of oil insurgency raises questions about the consultation and inclusiveness of local agency in the peace processes, and the sustainability of the amnesty as a conflict resolution mechanism. This paper analyzes the amnesty policy from the conceptual lens of ‘the everyday’. It contributes to the broader study of peace and conflict, and unpacks the utility of ‘the local’, ‘bottom-up’, and ‘agency’ in conflict-affected societies. It interrogates the local narratives and everyday perception of what ought to constitute the peace measures of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP). The paper draws upon empirical evidence from a qualitative field research that involved the use of semi-structured and in-depth interviews of the conflict actors and stakeholders in three selected states (Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers) of the Niger Delta. The paper argues that the government’s focus on the PAP from a top-bottom approach to peace is unsustainable without local determinants and ownership of the peace process. It concludes that beyond the amnesty, the government should rethink its conflict transformation strategy from the primacy of the state as the sole referent to one that engages the everyday peace narratives of the local people as a panacea to sustainable peacebuilding.
Author: Harrison Chukwuma Ajebon (Durham University) -
Facing the challenging task of finding sustainable solutions to peacebuilding, conflict resolution applies a range of different tools. Among these tools, education has become increasingly prominent, as a way to engage with different conflict narratives and therefore a way to encourage dialogue between supposedly irreconcilable identities and claims. This paper contributes to the discussion about education as a conflict resolution tool by looking into the value of using fictitious case studies in education in conflict-affected environments. We argue that ‘imagined conflicts’ can be a tool for both practicing and learning about conflict resolution, by creating temporary spaces of constructive interaction between the conflicting parties. These spaces challenge participants’ existing ideas about conflict in general, as well as the ‘other’ in conflict. The analysis focuses on the use of fictitious case studies in an international conflict management course in the Caucasus. We ran this one-week intensive course at the NATO Defence Institution Building School in Tbilisi, involving both military and civilian officials from Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. Based on semi-structured interviews and open-ended participant feedback, we discuss the rationale for and assess the impact of structuring the course around an ‘imagined conflicts’ in this specific context, and to what extent they provide opportunities for future reconciliation.
Authors: Norma Rossi (Royal Military Academy Sandhurst) , An Jacobs (Nottingham Trent University) -
This paper analyses the potential of the workplace for peacebuilding by looking into the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In its socialist past, the country’s coexistence between different ethnic groups was largely attributed to industrial development, as people made massive moves from rural to urban areas in search of employment. Industrialisation was followed by a large-scale urban development which included housing for employees of new factories. Workers interacted in the workplace and in their new neighbourhoods, which led to an increase in inter-ethnic exchange to an extent never seen before. The role of the socialist system was crucial in this regard as it enabled an unprecedented level of labour rights and opportunities for socialising inside and outside the factories. The war and the ensuing ethnic cleansing, however, turned most of these neighbourhoods and workplaces into mono-ethnic spaces.
After the conflict, the aggressive marketisation approach of international interveners resulted in the loss of many jobs in the industrial sector, which further reduced the chances for ethnically mixed workplaces and opportunities for inter-ethnic socialising. Over time, however, some companies have crossed the ethnic divide by hiring workers from different ethnic backgrounds. This paper explores an ethnically mixed workplace in such an enterprise in Bosnia via ethnographic research, undertaken over a period of eight months. It therefore focuses on the micro level, generally overlooked in international relations’ debates on peace. At the same time, the paper discusses the macro level by comparing the earlier socialist political economy with the current neoliberal one. Insights from the micro level are collected through participant observation and interviews with workers in the enterprise which are then compared with findings from interviews with senior citizens who have spent most of their working years in factories under a socialist system. The research looks in particular at how the treatment of workers under different systems provides different outcomes for relationships built in the workplace. The paper argues that the potential of the workplace for inter-ethnic cooperation is quite limited due to the neoliberal context and can even lead to further grievances.Author: Jasmin Ramovic (University of Manchester) -
The lasting separation between Greek and Turkish Cypriots on the small island of Cyprus has long been a contentious issue of the Eastern Mediterranean. The protracted yet ‘comfortable’ nature of the Cyprus conflict profoundly affects both Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities, as it inevitably entwines in their daily lives. For residents of cities such as Nicosia, the capital of the Republic of Cyprus in the south and the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) in the north, the patterns of everyday peace practices are embedded within and between communities. Nicosia, as the last divided capital in Europe, is ‘rife with symbols of conflict that demarcate division, and in turn demarcate the conflict in the imagination’ in the experiences of both communities (Bakhsi, 2012: 5). The conventional peacebuilding initiatives often fail to address the space-based issues however, as Björkdahl (2013: 220) argues, peacebuilding needs to be urbanised to better address and mitigate tensions and ethnocratic spatial practices in the city’. This paper will focus on the youth narratives on everyday peace in Nicosia and the impact of space and place on it based on the broad interviews with the Cypriot youth.
Author: Cihan Dizdaroglu (Coventry University)
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Panel / Migration Management from a Regional Perspective Parsons RoomSponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working GroupConvener: Maria Koinova (University of Warwick)Chair: FOTEINI KALANTZI (University of Oxford)Discussant: FOTEINI KALANTZI (University of Oxford)
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Despite its geographical proximity to Europe, Africa has not always assumed the highest place in the European Union’s (EU) list of priorities (Taylor, 2004). But with population movements from Africa to Europe increasing in the 1990s, the EU began to attach significant importance to Africa, resulting in the tripartite marriage of development aid, migration and security (Yemane, 2016). In recent years, the EU has formulated three-pronged approach to migration control which revolves around the Common European Asylum and Migration Policy, which seeks to achieve migration control at the external frontiers of the Europe by cooperating with the peripheral member states, soliciting cooperation from third countries in West- and North Africa, through its European Neighbourhood Policy Action Plans and mainstreaming issues of migration with development cooperation. A growing number of studies have highlighted the external dimension of EU action on migration to achieve ‘non-entrée regime’ (Orchard, 2014) by cooperating with peripheral member states and/or African coastal states.
However, less attention has been given to EU’s new drive beyond its outer perimeter and further inland in Africa. In this presentation, I show that, in the wake of an increased number of refugees and asylum seekers from the Horn of Africa region and the inability of African coastal states like Libya, Tunisia and Egypt to curb upstream migration, the EU expanded its external border control measures to what can be called, ‘pre-frontier’ countries in Africa by constructing ‘wall of money’ (Smith 2019) under the cloak of development aid. In this context, I investigate the Cotonou Partnership Agreement (CPA) between African, Caribbean and Pacific group of states and the EU and its member states. By way of a case study, the research seeks to problematize EU’s financial support to an authoritarian regime in Eritrea. Of particular relevance to this paper are the conditionalities for development aid dispersals to recipient countries as stipulated in Articles 6-9 and 96 of the CPA.
In December 2015, following a marked increase in the number of Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers entering Europe, the EU decided to give the Eritrean government €200 million under its 11th European Development Fund (Yemane, 2016). And in June 2016, a report by the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea found out that crimes against humanity were committed by Eritrean officials but the EU did not invoke Article 96 on consultation procedures and appropriate measures in situations of human rights violations and/or abrogation of democratic principles by aid recipient country. In order to critically examine EU’s development aid to a rights violating state in Eritrea, I build on Freeman’s (1995) and Hansen’s (2002) concept of ‘embedded realism’ and Brown’s (2002) view of ‘political conditionality’ in the context of CPA. This paper contributes to our understanding of the conflation of development aid, mobility containment and aims to expand Orhcard’s (2014) ‘non-entrée regime’ to what I would like to refer to as ‘non-exit regime’. In conclusion, I reflect on EU’s position in regards to the causes of mass exodus from Eritrea in light of neoclassical theory of migration and the practicality of aid as positive-influence attempt on Eritrea in achieving what Amartya Sen (1999) calls ‘Development as Freedom’.Author: Tesfalem H. Yemane (University of Leeds) -
Why have the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states increasingly engaged in the post-2011 Syrian refugee crisis? Drawing on a comparative historical process tracing method, I attempt to explain why the Gulf States have increasingly engaged in the international protection of forced migrants in the post-2011 Syrian refugee crisis, which will be contrasted to the far less attention raised by the Gulf States in the post-2003 Iraqi refugee crisis. Introducing the concept of migration diplomacy (i.e. states use cross-border population mobility for their diplomatic purposes), first, I argue the recent GCC states’ cooperative engagement as a case of migration diplomacy. Thereafter, particularly focusing on the role of external pressures, I explore the mechanism by which authoritarian governments are incentivised to take cooperative migration diplomacy at the international arena, or not. This paper concludes that the GCC states engage in “omnibalancing” behaviour when conducting migration diplomacy, and contribute to our understanding of how the Gulf States’ policy or diplomatic strategy is created in interaction with issues of international migration generally, and forced migration specifically.
Author: Hirotaka Fujibayashi (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies) -
Koinova Maria
The Global Compact on Migration established standards for migration governance in 2018, yet international organizations are increasingly challenged to deal with emerging global issues requiring immediate solutions, such as climate change, systemic economic crises, and large-scale migration. As a result a gap widens between intentions for global cooperation especially through multilateralism, and how governance is actually conducted in practice. Such gap is especially visible in the field of transit migration. It is largely a regional phenomenon, yet our understanding of the mechanisms and processes of its regional governance is still minimal. This article sheds light comparatively on major trends in the governance of transit migration in two regions – the Balkans and the Middle East – affected by the refugee movements from the war in Syria since 2012 and the conflict neighborhood of the Middle East and North Africa. Using a relational approach to polycentric governance, I argue that interactions among governmental, non-governmental, supranational and non-state actors, as well as sending and destination states form configurations of partially formal, partially informal relationships that de facto govern transit migration in a particular region. These configurations are underpinned by mechanisms of cooperation, conditionality, containment, contestation, attraction, and coercion, and are regionally specific. Socio-spatially embedded in areas with different political regimes and statehood capacities, such mixtures of formal and informal relational dynamics form the regional architectures of transit migration governanceAuthor: Maria Koinova (University of Warwick) -
Over recent decades, various governments have turned to maritime geographies in the pre-emptive policing of migration, deploying concentrated efforts of mobility regulation to territorial and extra-territorial seas. With and through this process of increased policing, the maritime has concurrently been expunged of frameworks of rights for migrants. This paper explores this hollowing out of rights at sea and how it has allowed governments to use maritime environments, and more broadly the condition of wetness as a means to hold migrants beyond the juridical order and administrative bodies of the state. Practices of containing migrants on and through the sea have become naturalized strategies of migration management and often precede more formal sites of immigration detention, such as in the context of Guantánamo in the US. This demonstrates how the maritime geography has become part of the “carceral circuitry” of immigration detention. The paper focusses on US policies of mobility control at sea during the 1990s to demonstrate the practices that contributed to the reframing of the maritime as a carceral space. The paper also exposes how methods of containing migrants on islands and at sea demonstrate a shared agenda of holding migrants beyond the juridical territory of the state and thus function together as demonstrations of a wet carceralities.
Author: Andonea Dickson (Queen Mary University of London)
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Panel / Policing’s contested relationalities Katie AdieSponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working GroupConveners: Catherine Chiniara Charrett (University of Westminster) , Rhys Machold (University of Glasgow)Chair: Craig Jones (Newcastle University )
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Across collapsing boundaries between state and private actors, between war and peace, between domestic and international, police power remains the central means by which social and structural violence is administered and maintained. This paper looks at the proliferation of 'policing' as more than police forces, but as a raft of technologies of social control to uphold a certain type of political order. The paper situates policing as a key node in the transnational project of racial capitalism by looking at the blurring of police and military action and the exchange of police tactics, forces, and weaponry in Kashmir, Baltimore, and Palestine/Israel.
Authors: Nivi Manchanda (Queen Mary University of London) , Rossdale Chris (University of Bristol) -
Recent critical scholarship on war and policing has begun to explicitly theorize the two in more intimate relation with each other, and especially in their connections to racialized violence and governance (for ex. Wall, 2016; Kelley, 2016; LeBron, 2019). Drawing on this body of work, I examine how logics of war and bombing operate within domestic spaces and reproduce racialized conceptualizations of threat. I focus on a confrontation between the MOVE organization and the Philadelphia police department in 1985, which led to the police firing of 10,000 rounds of ammunition into a row house in a middle-class black neighborhood where MOVE members and their children were living, and to the extensive use of military-grade explosives to penetrate the house, culminating in the police dropping a bomb from a helicopter onto the house. The bomb ignited a fire that killed six adult MOVE members and five children and destroyed 61 houses in the neighborhood. I examine the decision by the police to bomb MOVE and consider this incident in relation to the contemporary proliferation of drone strikes. As with the increasing procurement of drones by domestic police departments, the MOVE case shows not just the migration of military techniques into domestic spheres, but more significantly, it reveals practices of racialized targeting and surveillance that are common to both.
Author: Katharine Hall (Queen Mary University of London) -
When we think about ‘homeland security’, we imagine an effort to secure domestic life and the nation at all costs but also the multiplication of policing practices across borders. Indeed, the rise of homeland security after the September 11th attacks is widely understood as a process involving a global convergence around exemplars of repressive ‘militarized’ statecraft, which originate in particular locations under exceptional political circumstances and then colonize domestic policing as they circulate around the world. This paper argues that such a conception of homeland security problematically conflates its relational and world-making ambitions with an actually-existing universality. While much of the scholarship on homeland security is highly critical, the great majority accepts and naturalizes homeland security's self-implied assuredness by treating it as already monolithic and totalizing. This paper unsettles these presumptions. Following the work of Israel’s homeland security industry in India, insists that grappling with homeland security's worldliness requires following the involved actors as the basis of theorizing, rather than assuming their location, influence, or character and advance. In doing so, the paper locates the geopolitics of homeland security in terms of the fraught everyday encounters at work in the (re)makings of colonial statecraft across historical, geographic and cultural difference.
Author: Rhys Machold (University of Glasgow) -
The policing of the UK’s Muslim population through counter-terrorism and social policy practice has been subject to extensive examination and critique in recent years. Specifically, scholarship has attended to the multiple and proliferating ways in which the Prevent strategy in particular as a form of racialised bordering, policing Muslim subjects as outside of and threatening to white Britain. However, what has not been adequately explored is how the policing of Muslim populations both anticipated and happened alongside the increasingly intensified racial border work directed at other minoritised groups embodied in the so-called hostile environment. This paper brings together an analysis of Prevent on the one hand, and the hostile environment on the other, as intimately connected and mutually reinforcing examples of racial border work. At a time when Britain is convulsed by intersecting crises embodied in austerity and Brexit, casting out those who are not adequately ‘British’, who are rendered as threatening to the primacy and privileges of the more ‘deserving’ (white) British people, a return to better days is made conceivable. This paper shows how Prevent has contributed to the much broader and insidious campaign of policing Britain’s minoritised groups through racialised border work.
Author: Nadya Ali (University of Sussex ) -
This article addresses how the forced abandonment by state institutions leads to the dispossession of racialised and indigenous communities from their land. I investigate with how a lack of policing relates to increased and concentrated criminal activity in racialised zones. The ‘localisation’ of crime then provokes increased state intervention and surveillance, advances arguments for disorderly and irresponsible activity on part of racialised and indigenous communities, and provokes uneven criminal/economic relations with white/ settler/ imperialist zones.
I explore these issues through the case study of the Palestinian Civil Police (PCP) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the forced abandonment of Palestinian zones and communities. The PCP face a range of orders from the Israeli military occupation and apartheid regime, which control and limit their access to Palestinian communities. Parts of the West Bank and specifically East Jerusalem are becoming areas of increased criminal activity and further exploitation. While this paper addresses the impacts of a ‘lack of state services’ on the viability of local communities, it places these concerns in an anti-colonial and transnational framework, addressing tensions within statist responses to local grievances. Drawing on ethnographic research with the PCP this intervention explores how localised criminalisation and race relate to dispossession.
Author: Catherine Chiniara Charrett (University of Westminster)
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Roundtable / Reflections on collaborations between creative arts practice and social science in military research Martin Luther King
This roundtable includes creative arts practitioners, social scientists and curators. Its aim is to critically reflect on how collaborations between the creative arts and social science can offer insights in the field of military and conflict research.
Sponsor: #FutureIR @NclPoliticsChair: Jocelyn Mawdsley (Newcastle University)Participants: Michael Mulvihill (Newcastle University) , Alice Cree (Newcastle University) , Rachel Woodward (Newcastle University) , Sandra Johnston (Northumbria University) , Chloe Barker (Newcastle University) , Alison Williams (Newcastle University ) -
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Roundtable / Reviewing the NPT at 50: Actors, issues and next steps Council Chamber
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signed into force in 1970, has long been considered the cornerstone of the global nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament regime. Spanning three pillars of activity, including nuclear disarmament, nuclear non-proliferation, and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, the NPT is grounded on a Grand Bargain that sees its majority 185 non-nuclear-armed States Parties commit to not develop nuclear weapons, on the premise that the P-5 nuclear-armed states agree to steps towards eventual nuclear disarmament. 50 years since its entry into force the NPT approaches its 10th quinquennial review conference in 2020 under a storm of unusual magnitude. The issues facing the NPT at 50 capture a plethora of both long-standing and more recent political and security challenges. These include a rumbling discontent over the effectiveness of the NPT and other nuclear disarmament negotiating forums, discord centring on the recent Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, deep concerns over the demise of the INF Treaty, fraught relations between the US and Russia over the START-II negotiations, the US withdrawal from the JCPOA, and ongoing nuclear proliferation concerns in Iran and North Korea. This roundtable brings together leading and early-career researchers specialising in global nuclear politics and diplomacy. Chaired by Spain’s former Ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament, this roundtable brings together speakers from across the UK and Europe specialising in the politics, issues, and actors currently shaping the NPT. Discussants will not only address the major challenges impacting the NPT as it turns 50, but reflect on the key actors involved, including both individual States Parties and group players. This roundtable will further shed fresh empirical insight into the NPT’s 10th Review Conference (held in April 2020), and crucially address the ‘what next’ for the NPT moving forward.
Sponsor: Global Nuclear Order Working GroupChair: Ignacio Cartagena Núñez (Consul General, Spanish Consulate, Edinburgh)Participants: Clara Portela (EU Institute for Security Studies) , Nick Ritchie (University of York) , Megan Dee (University of Stirling) , Ben Kienzle , Laura Considine (University of Leeds) , Hassan Elbahtimy (King's College London) -
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Roundtable / Screening Violence: a transnational approach to the local imaginaries of post-conflict transition Daniel Wood
“Screening Violence: A Transnational Study of Post-Conflict Imaginaries”, an AHRC-sponsored research project currently in progress, aims to map the local imaginaries of conflict and post-conflict transition in five locations across the globe (Algeria, Argentina, Colombia, Indonesia and Northern Ireland). Our decision to focus on the social imaginaries of conflict is based on the premise that it is within the imaginary that the meanings of these struggles is fixed. A key feature of the project is its interdisciplinary and participatory approach to knowledge production, which draws on popular culture and its reception as a way into the rich textures, ambiguities and inconsistencies of symbolic worlds. We work with the medium of film in a multi-faceted way: as a methodological tool designed to set up debates that allow us to chart social imaginaries; as an imaginary space itself, both reflective and constitutive of the popular imaginaries in question; and as creative expression, as we work with local filmmakers to co-create a cinematic cartography of the imaginaries that emerge in each site throughout the project. Focus groups and audience ethnography serve as a people-centred, participatory approach to the production of knowledge that goes beyond the screenings in our attempt to understand local imaginaries.
Reflecting on this complex work in progress, this panel seeks to engage conference participants in relation to four key areas of discussion:
• How do questions of scale affect the study of local social imaginaries? In other words, how do local understandings of conflict show the influence of the local, the national and the international?
• The first relates to the value of using film as both a conceptual frame (film as a popular imaginary space in itself) and methodological tool (film spectatorship and reception as a window into the imaginary) for carrying out field research that aims to map the local imaginaries of post-conflict transition;
• The second addresses the architecture of the project and the challenges of carrying out this study comparatively across five sites.
• The third concerns how best to ‘translate’ and communicate the results from our multidisciplinary research, rooted in what popular cultural expressions can tell us about the imaginaries of conflict, in a way that speaks to both academics and practitioners within the area of International Relations.
The roundtable will be structured and present findings as follows:
1. The role of the imaginary in understanding post-conflict societies.
2. Film reception and audience ethnography: From teaching to researching using film in IR (Diah Kusumaningrum & Simon Philpott)
3. Watching Indonesia and Colombia from Argentina (Philippa Page)
4. Watching Indonesia and Colombia from Algeria (Guy Austin)
5. Watching Indonesia and Colombia from Northern Ireland (Brandon Hamber)
6. The potential for Impact: Roddy BrettSponsor: #FutureIR @NclPoliticsChair: Simon Philpott (Newcastle University)Participants: Diah Kusumaningrum (Gadjah Mada University) , Nicholas Morgan (Newcastle University) , Brandon Hamber (Ulster University) , Roddy Brett (Bristol University) , Philippa Page (Newcastle University) , Guy Austin (Newcastle University) , Simon Philpott (Newcastle University) -
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Roundtable / Sustaining the Outer Space Environment: Now and in the Future Bewick Room
The outer space environment is dynamic and ever-changing thanks to technological and scientific advances, however, with the rise of varied space actors and the congestion of Low Earth Orbit, there are critical problems, such as space debris, security, and weapons aimed at space, that are calling for more discussion at the international level. With the recent addition of the Long-Term Sustainability Guidelines and the Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines, as well as the forthcoming Space2030 Agenda, there is a growing concern for sustaining the outer space environment which will guide future law and policy as well as political and security measures for space and future space actors. Therefore, this panel aims to address these problems the space sectors is facing now as they will incredibly impact the access and use of space in the future. Our panel calls upon experts from legal, political, and security backgrounds in order to address what the international space community is working on with regard to these high-level issues and the concept of space sustainability.
Sponsor: Environment Working GroupChair: Bleddyn Bowen (University of Leicester)Participants: Scott Steele (Open University) , Lauren Napier (Northumbria University) , Thomas Cheney (Open University) , Mert Evirgen (Northumbria University) , Harriet Brettle (Astroscale) -
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Roundtable / What role for the academy and independent 'experts' in the post-truth era? Armstrong Room
There is a sense that we are living through interesting – epoch making – times. The UK decision to leave the EU, Donald Trump’s election to the White House, and the rise of (often xenophobic) populism across the democratic world suggest that the liberal international order, and the institutions it rests on, are under threat. Added to this, we have seen the development of a “post-truth” era, where expert information and reliable evidence are undermined by mainstream political elites, often with support by the mass media. The purpose of this roundtable is to explore how as experts in Politics and International Relations, we should be responding to these challenges. These challenges pose questions about the role of ‘experts’ and the methodological and theoretical tools they use. These challenges also encourage us to reflect on the extent to which current events might be novel, and how history might be a guide to the present. Finally, there are questions about the role of the academy and its ability to respond to issues connected to truth, knowledge and narratives.
Sponsor: Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working GroupChair: Ilan Baron (Durham University)Participants: Tony Lang (University of St. Andrews) , C Cheng , Roger Mac Guinty (Durham University) , Karin Fierke (University of St Andrews) , Tereza Capelos (University of Birmingham) , Hesham Hassan Shafick Abdeldary (Queen Mary University of London) -
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Roundtable / After Brexit: Navigating Britain’s Security, Defence, and Foreign Policy Pandon Room
In the aftermath of leaving the European Union, Britain is at a crossroads. Since the end of the Second World War, the UK has straddled the Atlantic, maintaining close relationships with both the US and Europe. It has forged a ‘Special Relationship’ with the US while participating in the EU’s Single Market and the Common Security and Defence Policy. In effect, Britain’s strategy has been to move seamlessly between these two poles and to serve as a power broker and translator between them. After leaving the EU, what sort of relationship will Britain seek— should it seek— with its European neighbours and allies? How will Britain define its new place in the world? What will be the impact of Brexit on Europe’s security, defence, and intelligence strategies given the departure of one of the EU’s most important security actors? To what extent should the UK participate in initiatives such as the European Security Council or the French-led European Intervention Initiative? What kind of foreign and security policy do the British people want? There are no clear answers to these questions, but this roundtable aims to kickstart a set of ‘After Brexit’ conversations within the BISA academic community.
Sponsor: European Security Working GroupChair: C ChengParticipants: Julie Smith (University of Cambridge) , Sara Dorman (University of Edinburgh) , Catarina Thomson (University of Exeter) , Philip Cunliffe (University of Kent) , Jocelyn Mawdsley (Newcastle University) , Ben Kienzle -
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Roundtable / Book roundtable: 'Global Justice and Social Conflict: The Foundations of Liberal Order and International Law' by Tarik Kochi Stephenson Room
The roundtable participants will engage critically with the recently published book Global Justice and Social Conflict: The Foundations of Liberal Order and International Law by Tarik Kochi (Routledge, 2019), followed by the author's responses and open discussion.
In the book, Kochi argues that to think seriously about global justice we need to understand how both liberalism and neoliberalism have pushed aside rival ideas of social and economic justice in the name of private property, individualistic rights, state security and capitalist ‘free’ markets. Ranging from ancient concepts of natural law and republican constitutionalism, to early modern ideas of natural rights and political economy, and to contemporary discourses of human rights, humanitarian war and global constitutionalism, Kochi shows how the key foundational elements of a now globalised political, economic and juridical tradition are constituted and continually beset by struggles over what counts as justice and over how to realise it. Engaging with a wide range of thinkers and reaching provocatively across a breadth of subject areas, Kochi investigates the roots of many globalised struggles over justice, human rights, democracy and equality, and offers an alternative constitutional understanding of the future of emancipatory politics and international law.
Sponsor: Ethics and World Politics/International Law and PoliticsChair: David J. Karp (University of Sussex)Participants: Tarik Kochi (University of Sussex) , Andrea Birdsall (University of Edinburgh) , Tony Lang (University of St. Andrews) , Maïa Pal (Oxford Brooks University) , Lara Montesinos Coleman (University of Sussex) -
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Panel / Borders, Populism and nationalist politics in Asia CarilolSponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working GroupConvener: Dag Erik Berg (Molde University College)Chair: Dag Erik Berg (Molde University College)Discussant: Jessica Northey (Coventry University)
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In November 2015, a Taiwanese singer named Chou Tzuyu appeared on a Korean TV show as a member of the pop group ‘Twice’. During the show, she claimed that she was from Taiwan (without mentioning China), and waved the Republic of China flag. Chou was subsequently the recipient of vociferous condemnation from Chinese ‘netizens’, and eventually was compelled to make a public apology for her actions. This apology became the center of an Internet-based dispute between the netizens of mainland China and Taiwan, conducted mainly on the Facebook page of then Taiwanese Presidential candidate, Tsai Yingwen. Subsequently, the tone of this dispute had significant effects on the 2016 Taiwanese general election, with a decisive number of Taiwanese voters switching their support to Tsai. “Cyber-populism”, and the online activities of nationalistic Chinese netizens, are not just limited to the Chou Tzuyu incident. Indeed, Chinese netizens have been vocal in the wake of other international incidents, such as the United Nations Convention ruling on the so-called “Nine-Dash Line” dispute. However, the Chou Tzuyu case was particularly notable for its clearly counterproductive outcome: an argument over the use of Taiwanese symbols of nationalist identity, driven by the identities and objectives of Chinese nationalists, contributed to the electoral success of a pro-Taiwanese independence political party. With this in mind, this paper examines the relationship between Chinese nationalism and cyber-populism, and discusses the effects of this phenomenon on the achievement of China’s stated foreign policy goals. In addition, this paper proposes to examine the significance of symbols of Taiwanese and Chinese independence, and to examine what, if any, relationship exists between the interpretation of these symbols and events and the domestic and foreign approaches of the Chinese government.
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How do minorities (re)establish their identity at a time of crisis? This research explores the question in the context of the Rohingya refugee crisis. Since August 2017 Bangladesh is hosting one million Rohingyas, a Muslim ethnic minority from Myanmar who fled from neighbouring Myanmar when the Burmese military launched a clearance operation. The Bangladesh-Myanmar borderland is also home to Bangladesh’s small but culturally significant Buddhist population and has been a scene of both anti-Buddhist and anti-indigenous violence in previous decades. However, despite the proximity and intensity of the ongoing anti-Muslim violence across the border and the presence of large Rohingya refugee population, any major anti-Buddhist violence has not been reported on the Bangladesh side of the border since the beginning of the Rohingya crisis. Based on fieldwork conducted in the Bangladesh-Myanmar borderland, this paper shows that during the height of the 2017 Rohingya crisis, Buddhist-Muslim relations in the Bangladesh-Myanmar borderlands remained peaceful due to strategic measures taken by both Buddhist civil society and Bangladeshi government to de-escalate communal tensions. These measures, ranging from community driven activities to state level initiatives, were instrumental in maintaining peaceful communal coexistence on the Bangladesh side of the border.
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Rebellion by definition constitutes a break with ordinary politics. Our conceptual understanding of armed resistance and civil wars is thus inherently linked to the exceptional, stressing violence and suffering in a context where normal norms and rules are seemingly suspended. This is amplified by the fact that most scholarship focuses on the high politics of civil wars, particularly the ideologies and strategies of elites. In contrast, this paper asks about the everyday of armed struggle, which has thus far not received much scholarly attention. Understanding the lifeworlds of ordinary rebels is important because they form the social foundation that enable revolutionary ideologies and armed resistance in the first place. To shed light on the vernacular spaces of revolutionary struggle the paper draws on ethnographic observations on sociable practices inside the Kachin, Karen and Naga rebellions in Myanmar’s borderlands. In doing so, it explores the politics of karaoke, beauty queens and fish paste as revolutionary sociability, understood as the liminal space where playful performances of revolution and the harsh realities of war meet and overlap. It is here where revolutionary subjectivities are formed and contested.
Author: David Brenner (Goldsmiths)
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Panel / Evolving Protection Architectures at the United Nations Katie AdieSponsor: Intervention and Responsibility to Protect Working GroupConvener: IR2P Working groupChair: Dr Chloe M Gilgan (York Law School)
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Since the creation of the United Nations and the establishment of the Security Council as the guardian of international peace and security much have changed. The humanisation of international law has developed new obligations for both States and their international organisations. Particularly, the emergence of R2P as a concept related to the prevention and sanction of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity has pointed out the necessity for an evolution of the international legal regulations, specifically, to the articles that regulate the Security Council in the Charter. Whereas different proposals have been presented before the United Nations General Assembly, none of them has been successful. For this reason, taking advantage of the strong support that the concept of Open Government has gained from the international community, as a new international public policy, this paper will suggest that to legitimate the decisions taken by the Security Council related to R2P, the decision process must be done under the principles of Open Government. This is to say, when the members of the Security Council must take any decision on whether to apply R2P or not, a process based on the principles of collaboration, transparency and participation must be applied. In this case, the members of the General Assembly would have a right to know the reasons used as a basis for any decision on R2P. Additionally, it will propose the use of the new information and communication technologies for sharing the decisions within the members of the international community. This will help to legitimise the conduct and actions of the permanent members of the Security Council before the international community and to guarantee that no other action would be taken unilaterally. Consequently, in any case that a state ignores the decision taken by the Security Council, even though the reasons of inaction have been explained, the rules of international responsibility must be applied to such state.
In this sense, transparency will work as a mechanism to overcome the continuous paralysis that the Security Council have been suffering due to political and economic interests as the permanent members will be obliged to base their vote on legal reasons and not on their interests.
The present research will use the deductive, systemic and comparative method to determine whether the principles of Open Government can be applied to the international relations and, if so, how it should be done. All in all, this paper looks for a resource to diminish the risk of delegitimating the role of the Security Council and the possible risk of the renaissance of unilateral intervention.Author: María Fernanda Arreguín Gámez (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) -
A common criticism against intervention in general, and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) more specifically, is that focus is on atrocity crimes, and not on ‘everyday atrocities’ – a term used to refer to deaths from hunger, poverty, and ill-health. “In the Rwandan genocide, around 800,000 people were killed in one hundred days. A person dies for hunger-related reasons every 10 seconds” as Dunford and Neu recently argued. Chomsky similarly has argued that R2P encounters a problem of double standards as “there is no thought of invoking even the most innocuous prescriptions of R2P to respond to massive starvation in the poor countries”. The implication is that money and effort should be spent instead on hunger, poverty-alleviation, and development, since these cost more lives and can be considered underlying causes for atrocity crimes.
This paper aims to show that such a view is misguided, and that it is likely to have the opposite of the intended results. Two main arguments will be put forward. It will be shown a. that the current focus of R2P on atrocity crimes is justified on moral, psychological, and political grounds, conflating the two priorities, atrocity crimes and everyday atrocities will be counterproductive, and could lead to more lives being lost, and b. that the two priorities are mutually reinforcing, support by the international community on an instrument such as R2P is bound to have positive repercussions on similar instruments of human security and development.Author: Stathopoulos Athanasios (Leiden University) -
This paper argues for a re-examination of international society as a conceptual tool to examine international order. It does so to reflect on the role of progress for international order. Based on empirical data on humanitarian intervention between 1815 and 2015, the paper rejects the grand narrative of a progressing international order. Instead, it reveals the circular reasoning of basing the benchmark for progress of international order on its own values. I propose a two-dimensional conception of international society to capture the idea of progress of international order. Humanitarian emergencies provides the strongest indicator for the apparent tension between the pluralist and solidarist conceptions of international society. This tension between cosmopolitan and communitarian values does not confine international society to either a pluralist or a solidarist form. Instead, I argue for both solidarism and pluralism as orthogonal dimensions of international society and not as mutually exclusive or opposite ends of a spectrum. This approach allows for distinguishing between different types of international society shaping international order. The benefit consists in simultaneously accounting for the inherent morality of both solidarism and pluralism, for their combined role in determining the type international society, and for evaluating progress of international order against a framework independent from the current international order.
Author: Sebastian Plappert (University of St. Gallen) -
This paper provides a comparative examination of the UN and the UK’s respective commitments to human protection in order to assess state norm entrepreneurship as seen in the UK since 1999. We discuss recent developments in global policy-making on human protection, as captured at the UN level, against the UK’s engagement with the same cluster of human protection norms post-Kosovo. To assess the human protection norm complexity, we engage with constructivist norm research and public justification theories inspired by pragmatist sociology. This theoretical framework allows us to test and validate the hypothesis that the increased attention to tackling global normative challenges related to human protection at the UN level has not translated into the same level of commitment to human protection at national level. This is despite the UK being one of the key global players and P5 members that are responsible for advancing this normative agenda in the UN Security Council. We find two main explanations accounting for this: first, the lack of a normative champion at the helm of UK foreign policy to advance the recognition and diffusion of UN-embraced human protection norms by reframing them as ‘national interest’ prerogatives; and second, the conceptual confusion about the main elements of the human protection agenda, especially in regard to distinctions between the humanitarian intervention and responsibility to protect norms.
Authors: Cristina Stefan (University of Leeds ) , Blake Lawrinson (University of Leeds) -
Over the last fourteen years, the institutionalization of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has been continuing under the roof of the United Nations (UN) vis-à-vis the discussions in the literature regarding R2P’s death after the cases of Libya and Syria. Despite the growing number of criticisms against R2P due to controversial implementations and/or lack of implementation, in the meanwhile, under the UN General Assembly (UNGA), R2P has obtained the status of a formal agenda item three times, first in 2009 and then consecutively in 2018 and 2019. In this vein, this article first studies the formal debates in the UNGA in order to position R2P and its implementation under the roof the UN. Then, based on sample cases, it focuses on the practices of the UN Security Council for the purpose of analyzing the impact of the debates in the actual practices of the UN. Following from this, the article provides a critical overview of the gap between promises and action, and discusses the future of R2P.
Authors: Pinar Gozen Ercan (Hacettepe University) , Menent Savas Cazala (Galatasaray University)
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Panel / Foreign Policy Theories in Practice Bewick RoomSponsor: Foreign Policy Working GroupConvener: FPWG Working groupChair: Klaus Brummer (Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt)
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The Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI) was founded in 2012 by then-UK Foreign Secretary William Hague and UNHCR Special Envoy and movie star Angelina Jolie as a significant programme of the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Almost eight years after the initiative’s founding, this paper provides a new analysis of the initiative’s work to generate political commitments and take measures against conflict-related sexual violence. PSVI is an example of gender expertise or ‘governance feminism’ at work but has also been controversial within feminist IR and the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda community. Existing assessments have highlighted the role of PSVI as either ’normative entrepreneurship’, working to consolidate the WPS agenda, or a kind of securitisation, which risks denuding the agenda of its feminist credentials through an excessive focus on security solutions to sexual violence. I instead argue for a view of PSVI as a form of liberal governance, expressed in three senses of ‘governance’. First, governance as the control of war, by implementing, enhancing, or otherwise pursuing restrictions on armed actors through international humanitarian law, and at times signalling a willingness to use force. Second, governance as the proliferation of expertise, primarily through the standardisation of protocols and international standards, but also in deployments of gender experts to conflict spaces. Third, governance as the separation of political space, emphasising the division between ‘foreign’ and ‘domestic’ policy domains, and consolidating hegemonic ideas about the location of violence and the nature of statecraft. I combine policy analysis, interview data and information on spending and deployments gathered from Freedom of Information requests to explore the character and effect of PSVI to date, and to situate it within wider debates about the role of femocrats in international politics.
Author: Paul Kirby (Centre of Women, Peace and Security, London School of Economics) -
After the conclusion, and arguably failure, of the two landmark projects of Comparative Foreign Policy—i.e., Rosenau’s ‘pre-theories’ and the CREON project—a couple of decades ago, this particular strand of FPA research had lost much of its traction and appeal. This has changed in recent years, however, when calls to recover the comparative analysis of foreign policy has reinvigorated scholarship in this direction. This paper seeks to further advance this foundational comparative tradition in FPA by trying to accomplish two goals: First, it reflects upon the genealogy of the field and the contemporary context within which it arose and prospered. Placing comparative foreign policy research in an historical perspective allows for highlighting research trajectories and insights that, while overshadowed by the aforementioned projects at the time, seem worthwhile pursuing further. Second, the paper indicates a number of (for lack of better words) variables, or levels of analysis, that due to the U.S. centrism of the field of FPA have not received as much attention as they have should in order to arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of foreign policy making in other (i.e., non-US) political systems.
Authors: Klaus Brummer (Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt) , Chris Alden (LSE)* -
In popular discourse about foreign policy, appeasement has become synonymous with capitulation and even moral cowardice. The discipline of International Relations has relatively little to offer in terms of existing literature that might clarify the term or distinguish it from others such as accommodation or capitulation. Historians have, thus far, been unable to make inroads into the almost complete dominance of the single historical example of pre-World War Two British foreign policy in empirical scholarship on the topic. Both of these factors have led to a lack of serious discussion of how ethical judgements might be made about appeasement in different circumstances. This paper sets out a new agenda on the topic, how it might be studied, and how it can contribute to both scholarly and policy-focused work in the future.
Author: Benjamin Zala (Australian National University) -
The post-2000 spurt of regional integration in Latin America was marked by pronouncements of being categorically different from the exuberant history of regionalism in the region. This categorical difference was enunciated especially in terms of the logic of development that these new organisations espoused, decidedly in favour of a rejection of the neoliberal model of development. Organisations such as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean Nation (CELAC) argued for a more inclusive integration agenda that was beyond trade and more directed towards creating solidarity.
Led by the enthusiastic political leadership of an economically robust Brazil under President Lula Da Silva and petroleum wealth backed Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, this alternative regional vision seemed to flourish with abandon for awhile. However, with the post-commodity price boom economic downturn as well as the changes in political leadership in the region, this spat of regional enunciation seemed to collapse onto its own with the old evils of strong presidentialism and lack of institutional infrastructure in the face of waning political will again being named as the biggest culprits, responsible for the failure of this project.
This paper attempts to argue that despite the failure and stalemate of the three organisations, the issue and policy areas consolidated during the period remain potentially useful. It aims to explain the difference in the leadership projects under Brazil and Venezuela, as evidenced in the formation of agendas in the three organisations to argue that the processes of bottom up social participation in setting of the Brazilian integration agenda have enabled deeper integration and possibilities of reactivation remain potent, unlike the top-down Venezuelan leadership project. This paper hopes to comparatively study the same.Author: Devika Misra (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. ) -
Since the beginning of the mass movement called as the Arab Spring or Arab Uprisings, Libya has become one of the competition area in which various international and regional powers have sought to determine regional politics, expanding their influence. As such, Turkey has desired to control the shifted regional geopolitics by following their interests and goals in Libya as an essential regional actor. Notably, it has entered into the rivalry by supporting the UN-recognized Government of National Accord in Tripoli, against Haftar-based House of Representatives in Tobruk and its supporters, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
In this respect, this paper will aim to shed light on how Turkey has shaped its foreign policy in the Libyan Uprising, and which factors have determined its foreign policy behaviour. As a theoretical approach, the paper will utilise neoclassical realism which integrates system-level and unit-level determinants to define a state's foreign policy behaviour. In this context, the study will analyse Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's perception as the unit-level variable since foreign policy decisions reflect state leaders' perception in more specific times. Therefore, the paper will seek to provide an objective understanding of the perceptions of President Erdogan's regarding the balance of power, systemic risks and threats in Libya and Turkey's capability as the unit-level variable in determining Turkey's specific foreign policy in Libyan Uprising.
Author: Cangul Altundas- Akcay (Durham University)
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Panel / New directions in IR Swan RoomSponsor: Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working GroupConvener: CRIPT Working groupChair: Flaminia Incecchi (University of St Andrews )
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This article explores the relationship between temporality and identity. Temporality examines how the past, present, and future relate and interplay with each other. Examining identity formation and transformation through a temporal lens helps reveal how and why some identities, values, and norms have become more salient than others—an area that existing literature on identity in IR fails to address. Drawing on Heidegger, Ricoeur, and historical studies on temporality, I analyze the effects of temporal structures on identity-making through narratives. Doing so I come up with an analytical framework that demonstrates how self-identity is contingent to the collective social memory which is brought to live through the narratives of self in the frame of time. My analytical framework is useful for understanding rising powers’ preferences and interests because they are tied to their aspirational identities. Conventional explanations for the rise and fall of great powers argue that all rising powers are alike, because of their structural position and the presumed similarity of status ambitions. By bringing in the concept of temporality into the conception of identity, I challenge the conventional approach to rising great powers, arguing that each is different, because temporality constraints countries’ imaginations space. What countries think they are, is closely connected with where they think they are and where they are going.
Author: Ce Liang (University of Cambridge) -
One aspect of securitisation research that pertains all key debates but remains surprisingly and vastly under-theorised concerns the thorny concept of ‘success’, or its absence, in securitisation processes. Although success features as a key aspect of all definitions of securitisation, scholars often focus on different dimensions of the securitisation process, which means that their empirical assessments of success and failure are not conceptually analogous. Furthermore, despite sporadic (but scarce) references to partial, incomplete or failed securitisations in empirical studies, there is no framework to explore such varying degrees of success/failure and the relationship between them. Drawing on insights from the policy success literature, this paper sets out ideal-type criteria to measure four dimensions of securitisation success relevant to both the process of social construction (evaluation of discourses and of policy responses) and its consequences (implications for referent object and for agents). It draws attention to the complex, multi-dimensional and contested nature of securitisation success, proposing an original ‘success heuristic’, which can guide empirical research and systematise comparisons of different types/dimensions of securitisation success and failure, as well as the grey areas and tensions between them.
Authors: Georgios Karyotis (University of Glasgow) , Andrew Judge (University of Glasgow)* -
‘Political modernization’ means structural transformation needed in political domain in response to contemporary challenges. The concept might create confusions when scholars identify contemporary challenges and their political solutions based on Western experience and apply it universally, simply because contemporary challenges for which problem-solving should be prioritized or what the government and the people of different societies would perceive as ‘contemporary challenges’ vary. In recent ecological modernization studies, scholars like Janicke (1997), van Tatenhove and Leroy (2009) and Liang and Mol (2003) adopt the concept to explain structural transformation that is needed to better respond to environmental challenges. At the center of the revised traits of political modernization is ‘decentralization in governance’ first observed in well-functioning democracies. While the revised version is being tested against emerging economies in recent ecological modernization literature, this author suggests that developing countries like Malaysia are still stranded in earlier stage of political modernization, for having contemporary challenges that are identical with the three main characteristics of the classical political modernization theory, namely (1) Rationalization of authority; (2) Institutionalization of common interest and (3) Expansion of political participation.
Author: Wei See Chan (Department of Politics and International Relations, School of Social Science, University of Aberdeen) -
Recognition and social freedom are intersubjective practices in every-day life. They are common practices of giving respect and giving what we owe to each other. As foundational ideas they are key elements in political and social theory. A critical theory, then, evaluates normative aspirations of ideas in contrast to their social and empirical imperfections. In this paper, I engage with a blind spot in Axel Honneth’s critical social theory of recognition and social freedom. As it leaves out transnational and global issues. Honneth develops the normative ideas of mutual recognition and social freedom in relation to “social justice” at the level of the nation-states. However, I claim that recognition and social freedom should also be applied to transnational issues. An expansion towards “global justice” is fruitful and necessary because intersubjective relations do not stop at arbitrary national borders. Social relationships expand over space and time. Therefore, I develop a cosmopolitan account Honneth’s ideas of by understanding mutual recognition as respect across borders and social freedom as global justice.
The paper also contributes to the methodologies of international political theory and critical social theory. Honneth uses a distinct method of “reconstructivism” in arguing for normative ideas. This method is bridging a gap between ideal theory and the analysis and critique of existing social relations. Honneth’s method is reconstructive in the sense that is uses tools of historical analysis of ideas. It is normative because it views a few ideas and values as constitutive in the reproduction, integration, and most importantly the critique of societies. I contend that Honneth’s method and normative ideas should applied globally. In this sense, a methodological cosmopolitanism about recognition and social freedom is useful for the conceptual understanding of globalization and its implications.
Author: Simon Pistor (University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science) -
European integration benefitted for much of the post-war period from a presumed ‘permissive consensus’ (Lindberg and Scheingold, 1970). Over the past two decades this permissive consensus weakened and the opposition towards European integration in the European Parliament rose at remarkable rates (Startin and Usherwoods, 2011; Serricchio et al., 2013) indicating the increased disaffection with European institutions (Brack and Startin, 2015). The Agonistic Model of Democracy (AMD) proposes that such disaffection results from the absence of agonistic confrontation in democratic systems (Mouffe, 2000: 85; 105). Yet, AMD has not been applied to the supranational context characterized by diverse and heterogenic socio-political structures. Against this backdrop, this paper applies AMD to the debate on the European integration. The aim thereof being to identify hegemonic practices, i.e. the prevalence of established opinions on European integration, opportunities for antagonistic discourse or lack thereof and the consequences for the European Parliament. To this end, poststructural discourse analysis is used to analyse linguistic and non-linguistic data on the European Parliament (cf. Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). The paper presents a narrative showing how too much emphasis on political consensus in the process of European integration fostered disaffection and ultimately weakened the institution itself.
Author: Caroline Kalkreuth (Kiel University)
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Panel / Problematising migration and diaspora governance: From racialised migration control to 'minority' participation Dobson RoomSponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working GroupConvener: CPD Working groupChair: Kerem Nişancıoğlu (SOAS)Discussant: Kerem Nişancıoğlu (SOAS)
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The goal of this paper is to investigate the role of immigrants with regards to the economic prosperity of Yiwu, a town-level city in China where the number of migrants has doubled than its residents. Most of these immigrants are from Arabic countries. Many scholars have approached this issue through the disciplines of anthropology, economy and linguistics, but few studies have applied International relations theory to interpret the issue of migration in Yiwu. This paper proposes that compared to Western authorities' hierarchical attitude towards immigrants who are from developing countries, Yiwu adopts a cooperative attitude towards immigrants. Yiwu people cherish the value of migration and like to create wealth together with them. This paper demonstrates that migration is not a threat to society, but rather a human capital resource, which depending on the capacity of governance and management.
Author: Yingliang Zhang (University of Vienna ) -
In 2015 one million migrants arrived in Europe via Mediterranean maritime routes with Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans accounting for the largest share of those who crossed the Mediterranean in that year. Despite being a destination of migration for many decades, the European Union (EU) has deliberately transformed the Mediterranean into a space of crisis in need of urgent measures to deter what it categorised as ‘irregular migrants’ from arriving in Europe. In this context, the EU reinforced and/or edited existing EU readmission agreements (EURAs) with non-EU countries, and new ones were also agreed. Essentially, these agreements are policy instruments that aim to return undocumented migrants and refused asylum-seekers to their countries of origin or transit. Most academic literature in EURAs takes a Eurocentric approach, which fails to explore non-EU states’ perspectives and, importantly, the implications of such agreements for migrants in any significant depth, overlooking those at the centre of such policies. Thus, by borrowing some conceptual tools from the rich literature in post-colonial studies, particularly Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics, I will argue that the implications of such agreements are a clear example of states’ necropower in action which suggests that some human bodies are worth less than others. My argument will be based on the analysis on the Joint Way Forward Declaration between the EU and Afghanistan. I will focus on the EU’s narratives of safeness in Afghanistan and on the implications of such return policy for those who are returned, Afghans themselves.
Author: Manuela da Rosa Jorge (Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial (CPD), International Politics of Migration, Refugees, and Diasporas) -
How can we articulate Sikh-Canadian political success and to what factor can it be attributed? Several factors that relate to minority political participation explore the Sikh community’s electoral success in Ontario and British Columbia since 1981. The paper asks why Sikhs in Canada are more politically motivated than other minorities. The seven independent variables derived from previous theories of minority political participation and are applied to the case study of the Sikh diaspora in Canada. It was expected to find that Sikhs are able to exploit all of these factors, while other minorities only have access to some. Instead, the results show that the Sikh community does not, in fact, benefit from all seven of the variables that are presented in this paper. This paper is a starting point for continued research on the complexities of the South Asian diaspora and the need to include Sikhs as a separate category in disaggregated analyses. In the future, more data should be collected on the current socio-economic status of Sikh-Canadians and an analysis of all possible factors that could contribute to Sikh-Canadian electoral success must be developed.
Author: Rupinder Liddar (McMaster University) -
Modern eugenics has its roots in the orientalist gaze of the public intellectual, encompassing both author and academics. In this paper I examine the role of the public intellectual as a securitizing actor in constructions of the ‘other’. This can be evidenced not only through literature, but also in the way that science has ‘othered’ immigrant women’s bodies through scientific experiments. Focusing on the experimentation on Asian women in 1960’s Coventry this chapter interrogates the link between eugenics and othering to argue that these experiments were used to emphasise the differences of immigrant women’s bodies to support their securitisation and illegalisation. This in turn exposes the use of science and the role of the scientist in advancing the imperialist agenda.
Author: Shahnaz Shahnaz Akhter (university of Warwick)
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Panel / Silence, Contestation and Denial in Post-Societies in Central, South, and South Eastern Europe Daniel WoodSponsor: South East Europe Working GroupConveners: Lydia Cole (University of Durham) , Jessie Barton Hronešová (University of Oxford)Chair: Katarina Kušić (Aberystwyth University)Discussant: Maria-Adriana Deiana (Queen’s University Belfast)
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Traumatic acts leave a dent in collective memory and lead to the creation of ephemeral commemorative spaces in the public sphere. These spontaneous memorials may face opposing dynamics: towards heritagisation and inclusion within official memory; or towards political contestation, especially when contesting the dominant narratives. Following the Brussels attacks, right-wing hooligans confronted the spontaneous memorial at the Bourse, while town authorities later planned to include it in official heritage. In Valletta’s polarised environment, for the past two years every morning activists have been restoring the spontaneous memorial to murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, which government officials would remove every night. In Banja Luka, a social movement calling for justice and the rule of law gathered around the spontaneous memorial to David Dragicevic in Trg Krajina, until it was repressed by force by the authorities. These three recent examples illustrate the tensions between bottom-up memorialisation and top-down official memory policies. Spontaneous memorials constitute arenas of contestation between various actors, including public authorities and social movements, in a battle to inscribe or remove their respective interpretation of political developments in the public landscape.
Authors: Ana Milošević (Institute for Criminology (LINC), KU Leuven) , Alfredo Sasso (Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa (OBCT))* , Davide Denti (Independent researcher)* -
Denial of war crimes and events as a political strategy has many aims and a wide range of tools. Denial can be used to create a new national identity and community. It can also be used to denigrate opponents and harness public support. The institutionalised denial that has developed in the smaller entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Republika Srpska (RS), has passed through several stages. From what Stanley Cohen (2013) calls interpretive denial of the RS authorities that have belittled the committed war crimes, to the current literal denial of atrocities (i.e. that they ever happened), the approach of the leading figures in the entity – especially Milorad Dodik – has been to gradually undermine validity of established and validated facts and forensic evidence. This strategy consists of the creation of ‘truth commissions’ for Srebrenica and Sarajevo, an alternative institution for the investigation of war crimes, new ‘data’ collection efforts, verification and an alternative institute for missing persons, all established or used with the aim to deny facts and crimes. Sanctioned by the RS leadership, these organisations have also obtained high support from RS victim and veteran associations that have been mobilised and organised in order to ‘protect’ the existence of RS and provide evidence that both international and domestic truth- and justice-seeking efforts have been biased, fallacious and fictitious. RS authorities have ‘hijacked’ (Subotic 2009) the terminology of transitional justice – such as fact-finding and truth commissions – to boost credibility of their efforts and seemingly give them a scientific patina. This paper will first document the development of these efforts, analyse the various tools used in the RS institutions of denial (such as presenting corrupt statistics) and open questions about the role of such pervasive institutionalised denial. It will also raise some wider questions about source validation and the role of media.
Author: Jessie Barton Hronešová (University of Oxford) -
The large-scale atrocities committed in Prijedor municipality (Bosnia-Herzegovina) in 1992 have featured prominently in the ICTY’s development - from its establishment, its first trial (Dusko Tadic) to its final verdict (Ratko Mladic). As a result, it produced a lasting historical record of crimes committed in Prijedor and significantly contributed to the shrinking of the space for their denial, even if it did not qualify them as genocide. This presentation addresses civil society activities aimed towards facing the past and memorialisation in Prijedor and the question of how the ICTY has influenced the bottom-up mobilisation of survivors and returnees for the right to remember in an unfavourable environment. Inspired by previous work on the ICTY’s influence on democratisation (Nettelfield 2010; Rangelov/Teitel 2011), and by focusing on events in 2012, the 20th anniversary of genocide in Prijedor, I analyse how the court has influenced the mobilisation of activists locally and abroad and how they sought to influence its work. To address this bi-directionality, I first consider how two important cases then appearing in front of the ICTY (Karadzic and Mladic, both indicted for genocide in Prijedor and other municipalities) encouraged predominantly non-Serb protests sparked against local Serb-dominated authorities, and gave legitimacy to the activists’ decision to use the word ‘genocide’ in public commemorations. Second, I address how concentration camp survivors sought to influence the Tribunal’s work by filing an amicus request following a Trial Chamber decision to drop the count under which Karadzic was indicted for genocide in Prijedor and other Bosnian municipalities.
Author: Johanna Paul (Bielefeld University) -
This paper focuses on the politics of curating ruin and repair at Vraca Memorial Park in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH). While the site has enjoyed status as a protected monument since 2005, the difficult, ambiguous memory of the site, alongside issues with investment, have led to a process of ruination. In recent years, Vraca Memorial Park has garnered significant scholarly interest, situated within elite ethno-national politics and contestation (Dougherty 2019) and read in terms of its entanglements between history, memory, and identity (Musi 2010). The site has also been at the centre of grassroots and state contestations over memory and memorialisation, particularly since the vandalism of Ženi Borac / Monument to a female fighter in 2013, and the subsequent activism at the site. Acknowledging the extent to which ‘acts of defacing, destroying, and removing works of public art intuitively acknowledge their symbolic capital’ (Doss 2018: 18), the paper examines contestations over the monument’s ruination and repair and its status within wider memory politics. Situating analysis between security and political geography interventions, the paper examines grassroot attempts to curate community (Douglas 2017) through everyday practices of clearing, cleaning, cultivating, and curating at the site. The paper brings to the fore the ways that (artist-) activists have sought to curate contested public space, assessing the extent to which art has been ‘successful’ in terms of remaking and reimagining forms of political community.
Author: Lydia Cole (University of Durham)
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Panel / Smugglers, Maps and Saviours: International relations, migration and the potential to ‘other’: Sandhill RoomSponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working GroupConvener: Gemma Bird (University of Liverpool)Chair: Amanda Beattie (Aston University)
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This article examines the experiences and narratives of displaced men ‘employed’ by human smugglers along the Bosnia-Croatia borders; their aspirations to negotiate transit and avoid border violence; and their working practices and power relations of local smuggling hierarchies. We do so in order to examine the relationship between EU border security and smuggling.
The literature on human smuggling points out that tighter border surveillance increases the reliance of people on the move on smugglers to reach Europe. While current literature explores processes of human smuggling, it does so by dividing human smugglers as organisers of the clandestine transits on the one hand; and people on the move as their clients on the other. There is limited research on the way the EU’s strict border governance is leading displaced people relying on smugglers to become smugglers themselves, mainly as a result of being stranded in EU border zones. With the focus on the relation between the increasingly EU violent ‘border management’ and the recruitment of people on the move into smuggling networks, this paper seeks to contribute to the debates on impacts of the EU’s border management on clandestine transits. In order to address this relationship, the article is theoretically informed by the assumptions of External Governance, focusing on the modes and effectiveness of EU external governance in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice. By exploring the process of externalisation of EU border controls to neighbouring countries, we argue that such border management instead of combating smuggling, in fact, increases both the reliance on smugglers and smuggling activities. We argue that this is the case because, as our empirical data shows, smuggling is not just a means by which borders are crossed - rather, it is a source of employment, protection, survival, structure and hierarchy, and as such, is deeply embedded in the lives and experiences of displaced people’s journeys through the EU.Authors: Helena Farrand-Carrapico (Northumbria University) , Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik (Aston University )* , Karolina Augustova (Aston University)* -
This paper will explore the 2015 so-called refugee ‘crisis’ from a postcolonial perspective dealing with what has been referred to as counter migration – not from Europe, but into Europe. It engages with the idea that international relations are related to aspects that can be globally postcolonial. The fact that the world is divided into two spheres and judged accordingly, means that colonial legacies are taking new forms. One of these forms is othering in dealing with refugees/asylum seekers, translated into the connotation of “politics of exclusion”.
The politics of exclusion will be shown through the clash between the nation-state and multiculturalism, exploring how Homi Bhabha’s notion of hybridity can fit into the context of the” refugee crisis”. It argues that a refugee is someone forcibly placed between two spaces and othered in both spaces.
The European Union as a body will be taken as an example to demonstrate the failure in dealing with a so-called refugee crisis that lead to othering, by putting more people under the label of the threat to national security and identity.
It is important to address these terms together to get a better understanding of refugee studies and the legacies of the past in international relations.Author: Sarah Elmammeri (University of Liverpool) -
This paper examines the politics of mapping what became known as ‘the refugee crisis’, and explores the roles that maps and cartography played in constituting ‘the crisis’ and the creation of EU’s spatial imaginaries. The paper focuses on maps on, or about, ‘The Balkan Route’, showing how European mapping of the route relied on assumptions about ‘The Balkans’ to represent ‘the crisis’ as a distinctly South-European problem. The paper engages with existing literature migration maps, but extends this by looking at maps produced for refugees – maps of cities, directions, refugee camps, enclosures – to show relationships between power, space and policy. The paper also historicises the current migratory journeys through the Balkans by placing them in the broader context of post-Yugoslav wars, and shows these intersections through maps of 1990s and maps of present-day migration, and the author’s own map showing proximity of refugee camps to 1990s concentration camps. Overall, the paper suggests that maps and cartography are productive sites from which to examine how spatial imaginaries contribute to our understanding of the micropolitical in international relations.
Author: Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik (Aston University) -
Recent scholarship in the field of International Relations attends to the role that Museums play in fostering knowledge production while at the same time being sites and sources of knowledge themselves. This article attends to this emerging set of literature through an interrogation of a museum installation at Tate, Liverpool entitled Refugee Journeys Through the Balkan Route: A Crisis No More? It rehearses the choreography of the installation and draws the audience’s attention to the creation of a quilt as a space in which to express solidarity, incite reflexivity, and wonder at how such engagements can support the transformation of gaze. Gazing is reflexively explored through the patchwork squares that were produced, and archived, throughout the installation. In so doing the article argues on behalf of imagination, emotional articulations, and storytelling on the part of both the academics responsible for the installation and those who participated in its experience suggesting that such experience have a transformative potential. This repository of unexplored knowledge foregrounds an argument suggesting that gallery installations are simultaneously sites of knowledge production as well as a site of critical reflexivity and have much to offer the discipline of IR, broadly construed.
Author: Amanda Beattie (Aston University) -
This paper reflects on the experiences of scholars and activists engaging with questions of displacement and border crossing in Greece. We recognise the role that scholarship and activism can play in defining people as being vulnerable and in establishing hierarchies and power relations. Not intentionally, but because the language of charity can lead to unintentional ‘othering’.
First, we engage critically with our own experiences. As an activist-academic from a British University engaging with a ‘crisis’ taking place on the islands of Lesvos, Chios, Samos and Kos and in the cities and Athens and Thessaloniki, and as an activist from Switzerland setting up an organisation and providing resources in Athens and on the islands of Lesvos and Samos. We reflect on our own practice, our own choices, our own experiences within the field and how these could contribute to establishing racialised hierarchies within the field of refugee support, and what we can do to overcome, or to challenge these effects.
Secondly, we draw on these experiences to propose an alternative approach to refugee support, both in academia and the NGO sector. We propose a system based on solidarity, that challenges the notion of charity, of ‘othering’ and of helplessness that often sits at the heart of NGO work. We ask, what questions should we be raising as academics, what support is desired by NGOs and how can we draw on solidarity, rather than charity to support people in meeting their own needs and having their own experiences heard.Authors: Gemma Bird (University of Liverpool) , Liska Bernet (Glocal Roots)*
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Panel / The Handbook of Global Politics in the 22nd century Collingwood RoomSponsor: Historical Sociology and International Relations Working GroupConvener: Nicholas Kiersey (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley )Chair: Nicholas Kiersey (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley )
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This paper takes the bicentennial of IR as an opportunity to consider the influence of Hedley Bull on the research agenda of the field. One of his ideas, called “new medievalism” has in the 21st century become a reference for analysis of the role of non-state actors in IR. This chapter argues that “new medievalism” is a good basis for analysis of the role of diverse sorts of political actors as well as condition of public authority and its impact on global order. New medievalism describes the transformation of power and authority within the 21st century in terms of polycentrism. This chapter aims to investigate this claim in the context of three basic dynamics of contemporary world politics: order, power and authority, and politics. The expected result of this investigation will be to sketch a holistic agenda of historical as well as empirical and foresight research based on this concept.
Author: Aleksandra Spalinska (University of Warsaw) -
On the eve of the bicentenary of the formal founding of International Relations (IR), this chapter looks back at the origins and evolution of Global Society Theory (GST). It starts with a review of the deep origins of thinking about global society, with the so-called ‘English School’, and its thinking about international and world society, as it evolved during the last decades of Western-global international society from the 1950s to 2019. Section 2 covers the turbulent period of deep and contested pluralism dominating the 2020s and 30s, and marking both the transition from a Western-dominated to a more global international society, and from the English School framing to an emergent GST one. Section 3 surveys the development of GST, and its relationship to the embedded pluralism and humanist solidarism that consolidated global society in the long five decades following the Impactor Crisis of the late 2030s. Section 4 examines the breakdown and reconfiguration of GST from the 2090s to the present under the rising pressure of deep divisions over questions about the nature and purpose of humankind.
Author: Barry Buzan (LSE) -
The development of a global health regime is a major international question in the twenty-second century. However, while a material global governance health regime is emerging, so far there is little sign of a positive-normative global health paradigm. Thus, paradoxically, the regime proceeds on the basis of a securitization of global health policies, and communitarian ethical standards. The paper comprises four sections. The first section is devoted to global health politics. The second section discusses the absence of a global health ethical paradigm in the twenty-second century. The section debates how such absence is the result of the hegemony of communitarian ethics in International Relations. The third section develops the argument that the absence of a global normative health paradigm has conducted to a scenario of increased securitization of global health policies. The concluding section explores how the cosmopolitan ethical void negatively influences the global public policy regime in the field of world health.
Author: Maria Ferreira (Technical University of Lisbon, IR department) -
Despite major accomplishments in quantum computing capacities over the last century, difficulties known since the last AI hype cycle of the 2010s have returned in a new form. Governments and businesses had to cope with negative effects such as overlearning of algorithms and deterministic predictions of AI-systems in conjunction with extensive reliance on computer programs. But this time the complexity was not in avoiding discrimination resulting from biased data, but in avoiding general societal boredom, and saturation through over-optimization by the logic of machines. The major problems for human society being associated with this new rule of logic were firstly the loss of chance and secondly the loss of basic problem-solving competencies. Today, every European citizen has the right to information search de-optimization. Only a few years ago, this was almost unthinkable. This dossier traces the history of this process and looks at the development of the legislation of the embedded mismatch
Author: Isabella Herrmann (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften) -
A central node in this contribution to the Handbook is the Digital Pale, understood as a kind of modified or updated version of the digital divide. It has specific resonance in the Irish case; for centuries ‘The Pale’ was a zone of British colonial governance on the east coast of Ireland that was ‘settled’ and considered ‘safe,’ while ‘beyond the pale’ was considered a zone barbarism. Through an engagement with Mark Fisher’s work on capitalist realism, the paper then discusses the continued salience of socialist strategy: After a long hiatus or diversion into some of the worst aspects of new left politics, such as an overly optimistic appraisal on the potential of multiplicity, localism, the politics of irony and flannerie, but above all a rejection of the utility of working thru the state (the popularity of which we can claim is symptomatic of the victory of neoliberalism not only in destroying social institutions, but also our very confidence in collective action), material pressures are such in the next 20-50 year timeframe that left party politics returns!
Author: Nicholas Kiersey (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley )
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Panel / The Women, Peace and Security Resolutions and the politics of gender expertise and feminist knowledge in post-conflict settings Council ChamberSponsor: Gendering International Relations Working GroupConveners: Laura McLeod (University of Manchester) , Marion GrezillerChair: Georgina Holmes (University of Reading)Discussant: Katharine Wright (Newcastle University)
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As the EU embraced the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda and drafted its own policies to be implemented in its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), it increasingly required and relied on individuals able to dispense expertise on gender relations and gender mainstreaming. The result has been the creation of positions dedicated to gender on a full-time or part-time basis, both in the EEAS and in CSDP missions abroad: Gender Advisors and Gender Focal Points. This paper draws on early findings of fieldwork conducted in October 2019 and March 2020 in two civilian CSDP missions, EULEX Kosovo and EUMM Georgia, to understand the implications of the implementation of the WPS agenda through technical expertise. Particularly, the paper explores how Gender Advisors and Gender Focal Points contribute to shape the content and practice of gender expertise in CSDP missions by analysing their experiences, challenges, strategies and dilemmas. By examining these issues, the paper will contribute to further our understanding of the dynamics of gender expertise in EU security institutions and in turn how gender expertise shapes the EU’s implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda.
Author: Marion Greziller -
As the 20th anniversary of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda approaches, we see heightened interest in the question of how to implement the agenda more effectively, particularly through widely adopted National Action Plans (NAPs). According to much of this policy advice, good WPS policy (and NAPs in particular) should be participatory, results-based, measurable and coordinated. In this paper, I will analyse these neoliberal ideals of effective policy by exploring specific (and mundane) practices and artefacts through which they are performed, namely participatory workshops, log-frames, indicators and intra-agency coordination mechanisms. Drawing inspiration from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, I will consider what types of common sense these practices of governance generate and how they effectively police the boundaries of the WPS field. I argue that the neoliberal logic of WPS NAPs chooses its priorities through the language of rationality, accountability and teamwork and as such excludes many injustices that cannot be framed in the language of consensus and results. Furthermore, these practices help solidify a shared ‘common sense’ of what effective action would look like and as such actively polices the boundaries of what is acceptable within the field of WPS.
Author: Minna Lyytikäinen (University of Helsinki) -
In 2010, 26 indicators tracking implementation of UNSC Resolution 1325 were developed for use within the United Nations (UN) system. However, the UN as an institution has not found it easy to develop practices and processes to interpret these indicators across various UN agencies. Indeed, indicators and their development and use are made through contested social and political processes. All too often, we accept the “black box” and do not fully realise or notice the compromises made in the production of that specific technology. Compromises include the goals being set, and the extent to which they achieve feminist and/or gender goals. Drawing on interviews carried out in New York during 2016 and 2017, alongside analysis of the annual Secretary-General reports on UNSCR 1325, this paper hones in on indictor ten, which purposes to measure the ’percentage of field missions with senior level gender experts’. I explore the development and use of this indicator to unpack how particular ideas about ’gender expertise’ are produced, contested and shaped, and how this has gendered ramifications within peace mediation, peacebuilding and peacekeeping contexts. I argue that this taps into important questions about who has the authority to act in the name of ‘gender expertise’.
Author: Laura McLeod (University of Manchester)
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Panel / The future of international studies in a digital world: which relations for which nations ? Martin Luther KingSponsor: Africa and International Studies Working GroupConvener: Christopher ISIKE (University of Pretoria)Chair: Apoli Bertrand KAMENI (Sciences Po Lyon (France) / Université Omar Bongo (Gabon))Discussant: Sylvie LEMBE
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This paper considers the fragile states of the Sahel as an argument in the debate on the decline of nation states in the practice of international relations, and assesses the consequences of this decline on the analysis of the future of international studies. More specifically, our paper is based on the case of Mali, a failed state located in West Africa and the Sahel.
In fact, the issue of the decline of nation-state in international relations is increasingly emerging in the literature dealing with the future of international studies.
This literature, far from being recent, has brought to the surface threats which destabilise nation-states at both the infra-national level and the supra-national level and upset the basis of nation-state.
In this regard, we would like to make a particular reference to Mali. It is a very edifying case because the political and social situation of Mali is particular and fragile.
In fact, from armed rebellions to terrorism and ethnic conflicts, Mali has been plugging in extreme violence for almost half a century.
This violence is based on long-standing differences between the country's ethnic majority (the Bambara people) and an ethnic minority fighting for secession: the Tuareg people.Note however that for a long time, the Tuareg people remained absent from the corridors of political and economic power. Furthermore, economically, the north of Mali, inhabited by the Tuareg, is a desert region, while Southern and Centre of Mali are economically safe, prosperous regions and enjoy a safe and blooming economy.
As they find themselves marginalized, Tuareg leaders rebelled against Malian governments, though their modus operandi was not radical. From 1960s until 1990s, they required self-governance for the northern regions. However, Malian governments were not willing to negotiate.
The refusal by the government to address their needs increased frustrations. By the 1990s, the Cold War ended. However, in Mali, it did not mean the “End of History “. The United States retreated from Africa. Therefore, more security threats emerged in Africa: among which terrorism. In its chaos and poverty, northern Mali was going to become a home base for terrorism. Free at last, Tuareg rebels radicalized themselves with intensified attacks.
In 2013, following the military coup in Mali, they launched a new military attack and took control of Northern Mali and have spread attacks all over Mali since 2014.
But, eradicating conflicts is a very burdensome task for Malian government who still have major challenges to contend with: the weakness of the rule of law and democratic institutions, corruption, the threat of a resurgence of extremists, poverty and social deprivation so much so that one could think obsolescence of Mali is planned.In addition to these internal threats, Mali is challenged at the external level by digital tools (internet). In fact, while once Malians could not express their claims, today, internet, Facebook, twitter, Whatsapp, etc., allow them to openly challenge their governments and make allegiance to these modern tools of communication which escape the Malian Government and contribute to the further weakening of Mali.
Thus, I propose a study with an added value: an interdisciplinary approach (using both transnational and Realism theories of international relations) to assess the consequences of these threats on the future of Mali as a nation-state.
More specifically, my paper aims to answer the following two research questions: (1) Is obsolescence of Mali planned given the importance of threats caused by almost half a century of tuareg rebellions, terrorism, ethnic conflicts and the digital age ? (2) How can a fragile State like Mali contribute to the debate on the decline of nation-state on the analyse of the future of international studies?
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For at least a decade Cameroon, like many african countries, has been facing a succession of events not far away from civil war and which therefore constitute a threat to its unity. In the east, since the 2000’s Cameroon is facing, the extension of the civil war in Central african republic with influx of thousand of refugees. In the north of the country, the islamic terrorist group, Boko Haram is a major source of insecurity and therefore a serious threat to the national sovereignnity. Kidnapping and kamikaze attacks have been going on since 2013 even though Cameroon has deployed at least 1,000 troops to its northern border with Nigeria and Chad. In the west of the country, the anglophone part of the country, a wave of protestation against the francophone domination emerged in 2016 and quickly turned to a separatist and military group fighting for inependance of the anglophone region under a new state called Ambazonia.
How can this situation be analysed and understood ?
Some may rightly see here a classic manifestation and movment of a « failled state », where ethnic, linguistic and religious divisions and illegitimate institutions and figures of the states are rejected. However, this point of wiew does not tell enough about the agenda of this conflictual dynamics. For so long, these factors are not entirely new yet Cameroon was reputed as a very stable country.
The main argument of this paper is that Cameroon, like other african states, is facing the new era of digitalization of the world where, thanks to digital technology, illegitimated states are subvertized from the infra-state level on ethnic and/or religious lines and from the supra-level by extra-states actors like Daesh or Boko Haram.
Key words : Cameroon, digitalization of the world, anglophone, francophone, nationwood, illegitimate states
infra-state level and supra-state level
Author: Apoli Bertrand KAMENI (Sciences Po Lyon (France) / Université Omar Bongo (Gabon)) -
Political science and its sub-discipline of International Relations in African universities has, since the post-independence era, come under immense scrutiny in terms of its relevance to the lived experiences of Africans. It is argued, for instance, that over 60 years of post-colonial African university education has not produced African epistemologies that inform teaching and learning at its higher education institutions.
The curriculum of post-colonial African education still reflects the legacy of colonial education which was hegemonic and disruptive of African cultural practices, indigenous epistemologies and ways of knowing and doing. This partly explains why the continent remains at the margins of world affairs given the nexus between knowledge creation and power. In the context of this paper, it raises fundamental questions about the content and relevance of the curricula of international studies in Africa as it relates to former colonial powers such as Britain.
However, the fourth industrial revolution has also affected Africa’s international relations profoundly, and in ways that raise new questions about international studies in African universities. For instance, to what extent are digital tools integrated into teaching methods? Is the digital revolution sufficiently covered in the international studies curricula? Also, what role does the digital revolution play in international studies research in an African university? Has digitalization become an issue for international studies scholars in terms of its implications for conducting foreign policy?
Against this backdrop, this paper proposes a comparative situation analysis of teaching and researching international studies in a digital era in Africa using selected universities from different sub-regions in the continent.
Keywords: Africa, Digital era, International Studies, Research, Universities
Author: Christopher ISIKE (University of Pretoria) -
Saying that international relations are no longer the prerogative of states brings nothing new. But what may be original are the trajectories that the destatisation of international relations are taking in a context of globalization. In this perspective, African Diaspora plays a key role as actors, influencing the relations between their country of origin and their host country. The case of Cameroon is really relevant. In fact, Cameroonian diaspora through its actions for or against the Cameroonian political authorities is today a crucial actor in the regulation of relations between Cameroon and their host countries. In the context of the political and security crises known as the “anglophones’ crisis”, the positions and informal alliances of the Cameroonian diaspora structures and organizes the relations between Cameroon and some countries.
Thus, the mobilization of the diaspora influences the opinion of their host country about the policies carried out in Cameroon. From transnational theory, this study intends to question the ability of the diaspora in influencing relations between host states and countries of origin.
When we talk about Diaspora and its dynamism, we are referring to the members of the Diaspora who still keep a link with their country of origin and not the “assimilate Diaspora” ( Lacroix, 2018). So, in what way does the African diaspora, especially Cameroonians, have become actors of international relations? The main hypothesis of this communication is that the African Diasporas participate to the reconfiguration of relations between African states and host countries.
This study is going to question especially the role plays by the Cameroonian Diaspora based in the United State of America in the US’s opinion about what is known as “anglophone crisis”.
The analysis is made by two parts: the first considered Diaspora as international relations actor according to transnational theory in the context of globalization and the second demonstrate how Cameroun Diaspora influences the relation between Cameroun and the USA in the case of socio-political crisis
Author: Christel Dior Tamegui (Université de Rennes 1) -
Digital transformation is often heralded as being potentially transformative for developing countries; promising the closing of developmental gaps, and improved economic prospects. Essentially, digital technology promises to bring Agenda 2063, as well as other Africa- focused developmental plans, to life. However, the sharing of best practices and the building of critical infrastructure requires trust. In the 21st century, the importance of trust in state-to-state interactions is evaporating not only because of societal changes, but because there appears to be more confidence in digital technologies than in multilateral institutions and systems. Nevertheless, technology is not neutral; even those created to facilitate diplomacy. In this paper, I contribute to the growing body of scholarship on trust in international relations by exploring whether lack of trust is hampering diplomacy. I hone-in specifically on digital transformation on the African continent. I ask whether or not any confidence-building measures (CBMs) are built into current digitalisation efforts on the continent. Additionally, I query whether CBMs still hold value for diplomacy and international relations in the digital age.
Author: Odilile Ayodele
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Panel / The Security of Life in the Anthropocene Parsons RoomSponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working GroupConveners: Tom Lundborg (Swedish Defence University) , Dan Bulley (Oxford Brookes University)Chair: Debbie Lisle (Queen's University Belfast)Discussant: Martin Coward (University of Manchester)
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This paper examines the challenge of care for the Anthropocene. If, as we are told, the geological conditions of our current age force us to think of life and security otherwise, there remains deep ambiguity about where exactly to go next. For many, it forces us to consider forms of eco-catastrophism that hold the promise of security as illusory in a warmer world. For others, the Anthropocene offers hope that ecological perils will lead to new forms of progressive humanism that will salvage life and security in creative ways. Finally, others have attempted to rescue hope by emphasizing ‘pluriversal’ social imaginaries built upon fluid, entangled, and diverse forms of life and security. This paper investigates how different logics of care are immanent within all three discourses. By tracing multiple, sometimes contradictory iterations of care in the Anthropocene – including care for the self and a care for the world - the paper seeks to trouble contemporary discussions on how to pay attention to a complex and fragile world.
Author: Cameron Harrington (Durham University) -
With increased attention on biopolitics, climate change and the Anthropocene, International Relations and Security Studies have increasingly focused on life, its protection and survival. When ethical questions are raised in this context, they have overwhelmingly centred on human life (Nyman and Burke, 2016). Taking life in the Anthropocene seriously, however, we need a posthuman understanding of what makes life live. Most forms of life actually live on, in or through other forms – they are parasitical (Zimmer, 2000). The paper explores how ‘parasites’ and ‘parasitism’ first emerged from the social world before passing back and forth through biology, picking up meaning at each turn. Taking its lead from Donna Haraway (2007), the paper uses recent advances in parasitology to argue that we relate to others (human and non-human) parasitically through complex networks of living dependence. This creates responsibilities and obligations that must be meticulously explored and then taken up in individual political contexts without moralistic rules to provide guidance or security.
Author: Dan Bulley (Oxford Brookes University) -
If every period in human history is defined by a horizon (Maleuvre 2011), the horizon of the Anthropocene appears to be that of humanity itself. On one hand, this horizon refers to humanity as the centre of all life on earth, a life that is lived primarily by man and for man. On the other hand, it refers to the temporal finitude of this life, exposed to the threat of extinction due to man’s destructive behaviour towards the planet. To prevent extinction, redefining life in less anthropocentric terms is often proposed as the only viable solution. In this paper, I problematize such ideas by turning to another horizon: that of the international state system. The international is a particularly pervasive horizon, within which the political value of humanity has been grasped for the past centuries, defining its purpose as well as end point, to live and die as citizens of states. Any attempts to transcend the Anthropocene as meaningful horizon of life on earth, I argue, must begin by grasping the conditions of this international life. In particular, they must come to terms with how the international already defines the purpose of human life in relation to the threat of reaching an end. I conclude by suggesting that since this threat gives meaning to all international life, the idea of overcoming it might, paradoxically, not even be desirable in the first place.
Author: Tom Lundborg (Swedish Defence University) -
This paper is part of a research project that seeks to conceptualize chemical warfare and the toxic nature of war as a part of current ecological upheavals. Acknowledging how toxicity is a trait and a remnant of war, the paper examines current efforts of Euro-American militaries to “green” themselves and adopt more environmentally friendly practices. Based on empirical investigations of what such efforts encapsulate and what they omit, the paper explores what the notion of “sustainable war” might mean for bodies and ecologies. “Sustainable war”, the paper speculates, is a “green” or “pure” war that achieves its killing without leaving any ecological trace, but it can also be a war that is sustainable because of an indefinite enemy concept (the war on terror) or lack of Euro-American corpses (drone warfare). Ultimately, the paper asks whether one ought to follow Alexis Shotwell in being “against purity”: Perhaps the more ethical war is the unsustainable one.
Author: Gitte du Plessis (Tampere University)
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Roundtable / Towards a critical security politics Armstrong Room
The UK’s approach to security and the ‘war on terror’ has been critiqued for privileging force, surveillance and militarism, but no substantive, alternative approach has emerged in academia, parliament or civil society which could challenge current policy. Some NGOs and parliamentarians have challenged this post-9/11 security orthodoxy. Yet these attempts lack academic rigour and are often developed in response to a specific government policy. The type of systematic thinking and empirical grounding that academic analysis can bring is often missing from the work of those at the coalface of policy development.
If this is a failure of politics, then it is equally a failure of the academy. The project of critical security studies has succeeded in deconstructing and critiquing the security architectures of the liberal state. Yet, it has often failed to engage – conceptually, disciplinarily, and practically – with questions of security policy. With the aim of more practically engaging with policy-making, this roundtable will develop potential directions for bringing the insights of critical security studies to the political arena. What would a critical security studies approach to security policy look like? How can and should those critical of the current security orthodoxy respond to – and reshape – contemporary security debates?
Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working GroupChair: Thomas Martin (University of Sussex)Participants: Nick Ritchie (University of York) , Elisabeth Schweiger (University of York) , Paul Rogers (University of Bradford) , Harmonie Toros (University of Kent) , Thomas Martin (University of Sussex) , Ruth Blakeley (University of Sheffield) -
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Panel / ‘Outside Voices, Informed Insight' – Intellectual Analysis on Military Relations’ History RoomSponsor: War Studies Working GroupConvener: Patrick Bury (University of Bath)Chair: Patrick Bury (University of Bath)Discussant: Patrick Bury (University of Bath)
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This paper analyses the various types of knowledge produced by think tanks as well as their practices in relation with NATO. To do so, this paper focuses on the competition between think tanks and their understandings of the world as well as the recommendations that they provide.
Building upon a two months ethnographic study of think tanks in Brussels as well as a dozen semi-structured interviews with think tankers as well as NATO employees, this paper assesses the practices and discourses that shape the interaction between experts and practioners in the field of international relations and security.
The first part of this paper provides a short literature review on epistemic communities as well as a short overview of the literature regarding practices and discourses. The second part of this paper provides a discourse analysis of the reports published by think tanks. The discourse analysis is inductive, with a special focus on recommendations and representations of Russia provided by think tanks. The third part of this paper relies on interviews at NATO and with think tankers and aims to outline the practices that shape the interaction between think tanks and NATO and the specific discourses and knowledge that circulate between the two actors.This paper is part of an on-going PhD research.
Author: Cindy Regnier (University of Liège) -
Bernard Fall (1926-1967) cuts an intriguing figure in the annals of American history. He produced an extraordinary volume of writing – seven books and 200 articles – over the course of a life cut tragically, prematurely short while on patrol with U.S. Marines in South Vietnam. Fall’s books, notably Street Without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina (1961) and Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (1966) were instant classics and influenced generations of American soldiers and policymakers. In the 1960s, they read Fall to understand the French experience in Indochina and prepare for their own. A generation later, they read his books again to understand the things both countries had done, right and wrong, in Southeast Asia, and yet again, after 9-11, for what the lessons of the past might teach them about war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
As an intellectual he was the world’s leading authority on the Indochina region and on French and American experiences there, making singular contributions to the study of Vietnam and revolutionary warfare. As a literary figure his books and frontline war correspondence enjoyed a wide audience, highlighting the enduring resonance and value of his work. Despite this, Fall has also been quietly neglected as a subject of serious historical and intellectual inquiry. There are questions surrounding his contentious relationship with official Washington, his influence as an academic at Howard University in the 1960s on the domestic civil rights movement, and contemporary appreciation of his contribution to theories of revolutionary warfare vis-à-vis more prominent and widely recognized thinkers of his generation. Scholars have only recently begun to investigate these issues.
It should come as no surprise then that multigenerational invocations of Fall and of his most famous works, in the absence of deep historical understanding of the man, his ideas or indeed the context that produced both, have failed to appreciate a key characteristic of his work. Policymakers, for example, filtered their later recollections of war in Vietnam through the prism of Fall’s Street Without Joy. The lessons they championed, however, had little to do with what they recalled of the book or of Southeast Asia. Scholarship after 9-11, similarly, appropriated terminology Fall first used in his depiction of Viet Minh “active sanctuaries” to confidently frame Al Qaeda territorial control in Afghanistan and Iraq – with little appreciation of the origins of Fall’s terminology, his own questions about it or of its many meanings in the vernacular of the time.
This paper paints a detailed portrait of the intellectual, literary and historical equivocations embedded in the works and intellectual bequests of Bernard Fall. The sources available for such inquiry are robust. They include the corpus of publications Fall generated in his own lifetime, and the wealth of documentary source material he left behind, the most significant collection of which, the Bernard B. Fall Personal Papers, is currently held in the archives of the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. This paper draws on both, supplementing a critical reading of the former with recent archival investigation of the latter. In doing so, the intent is to shed new light on the full meaning of Fall’s original contributions to the study of revolutionary warfare, and on the ways in which those contributions were invoked in more recent years.
Author: Michael Innes (SOAS University of London) -
Both the UK and Ireland have undergone a recruitment and retention crisis over recent years. This paper seeks to explain why these countries, with, deliberately, similar military structures, some shared threats and common systemic problems have responded to the problem differently. This paper seeks to look beyond the simple answer that these two nations have acted differently because the UK is active internationally and Ireland, in remaining neutral, does not care about defense in the same way.
In order to achieve this aim, this paper seeks to compare the two nations' response to their common problem through a variety of lenses included media perceptions, foreign and defense policy but also broader questions about domestic politics.Author: Patrick Finnegan (University of St Andrews) -
Privatisation of security is becoming a contested topic of International Security Studies (ISS) in contemporary times. Currently, individuals, states, corporations and international organization like United Nations (UN) depend on various services facilitated by Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) both in weak and strong states. PMSCs come to fill the security void of those failed states, which are unable to run the government efficiently. In addition, PMSCs enable to prevent the threats posed by local warlords, terrorist networks, international criminals and drug cartels. However, the question on the monopoly use of force by PMSCs unlike state agents reminds repeatedly the ambiguous, complex and unreliable nature of PMSCs. There has been question on the dilution of sovereignty due to the use of force by PMSCs. There is no accountability and transparency of how PMSCs regulate wherever they go. Yet, the number of states hiring PMSCs keeps augmenting gradually in modern times despite PMSCs’ notoriety and complexity. The proposed paper will evaluate the emerging trends of PMSCs and their regulations. Some of the research questions are: 1) what are the factors that led states to hire PMSCs in modern times? 2) How do PMSCs thrive in modern days, and their implications in the security paradigm shift in international politics?
Author: Anuradha Oinam (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
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Panel / Civil Wars, Proxy Wars, and Insurgencies Sandhill RoomSponsor: War Studies Working GroupConvener: James Rogers (SDU)Chair: James Rogers (SDU)Discussant: Caroline Kennedy-Pipe (Loughborough University)
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Studies of civil war have begun to explore more acts by insurgents than their use of violence against opponents and civilians, particularly on rebel governance. However, we know little about insurgents’ use of non-lethal violence during conflict despite anecdotal evidence about rebels issuing threats, blocking roads, kidnappings, or in other ways impede on everyday life in conflict zones. These activities rarely lead to fatalities or involve a “battle” with government troops so are excluded from datasets commonly used for the study of civil war. In this paper, we develop a theory about rebels’ use of non-lethal violence as determined by temporal and spatial conditions. We contend that rebels will primarily use non-lethal violence close to stronghold areas as they need to both emphasize their presence but not aggrieve the local population through killings. We also expect there to be shift in strategy during negotiations when we expect an overall shift towards non-lethal acts in all areas for similar reasons – reducing the killing signals a willingness to participate in the peace process, while non-lethal violence signals the continued relevance of the group. We systematically explore this using sub-national data from Colombia, Indonesia, and Thailand and a novel multi-level modelling strategy.
Authors: Kaisa Hinkkainen Elliott (University of York) , Joakim Kreutz (Uppsala University)* -
The recent and fast developing body of work on proxy war, delegation, and external support has generated a range of important insights, but there has been little cumulative advance in understanding the causes of proxy war. One reason for this, we argue, is that in many cases those seeking to generate causal explanations are addressing subtly different questions. We therefore propose to distinguish claims about the causes of proxy war in terms of both their extension and intension. In terms of their extension, we point out the importance of distinguishing clearly between (i) claims about the causes of individual proxy wars, (ii) claims about the impact of a particular causal factor within a specified population of proxy wars, and (iii) claims about the propensities of particular factors in relation to proxy war. In terms of their intension, we draw on a contrastive understanding of causal explanation to distinguish claims about different aspects of how proxy war comes about. We point out, for example, that causal explanations might focus on the interests and motivations of beneficiaries, proxies, or both, taking the form of ‘selection’ mechanism or ‘demand-supply’ logics. Similarly, they might focus on why war breaks out, why the war that breaks out is a proxy one, or both. We proceed by laying out the problem, elaborating our distinction between different kinds of questions explanations of proxy war might address, identifying which of these questions have been most effectively answered so far, and identifying where further work would be especially valuable.
Authors: adam humphreys (university of reading) , Vladimir Rauta (University of Reading) -
This presentation consists in a critical investigation of the June 20, 2019 shooting of a United States Navy BAMS-D surveillance drone by Iranian armed forces over the Strait of Hormuz, and its implications for the strategic theorisation of drone usage. This incident presented the most high-profile military crisis revolving around a drone, and as such provides an excellent opportunity to test existing theories concerning the impact of drone usage on dynamics of escalation. According to multiple contemporaneous news accounts, the absence of an onboard pilot significantly impacted both the Iranian decision to shoot down the drone and the American decision to avoid military retaliation. This presentation, as such, will begin by reconstructing the sequence of events and the decisions made by both parties from available open source documents and accounts. I will then analyse this account to explore the changes in escalation dynamics and the strategic thought of both parties, concentrating on the Iranian decision to select a remote-piloted aircraft as target, and President Trump's ultimate decision to not retaliate militarily. Through this analysis, I expect to provide a preliminary empirical test of theories concerning the impact of drones on escalation and avenues for further theorising.
Author: Emil Archambault (School of Government and International Affairs, University of Durham) -
Although Iraq declared victory over ISIS in July 2017, the group has reverted to its traditional insurgency strategy and continues to generate instability across northern Iraq. This paper will argue that only an inter-disciplinary post-war recovery strategy that combines elements of security sector reform, transitional justice, and reconciliation will be able to effectively address the insurgency.
To date, the Iraqi government seems intent on repeating the mistakes of the post-2003 period which precipitated the rise of ISIS. Judicial processes against suspected ISIS members are heavily retributive and, much like the previous de-Ba’athification process, constitute collective punishment of the Sunni community. Militias such as the Hashd al-Sha’bi operate with relative impunity, and there has been no accountability for their grave violations of human rights and war crimes. There is precious little taking place in the way of reconciliation efforts to heal the deep social wounds created by conflict. While there is an understandable focus by many on the continued inter-communal Sunni-Shia tensions, intra-communal relations have been severely damaged; Sunni communities have been torn apart by ISIS, with many displaced families and tribes unable to return to their homes. For those who can return, what are they returning to? Significant parts of Sunni-majority cities like Mosul and Ramadi remain destroyed and littered with unexploded ordnances, garnering inadequate government attention, reconstruction funding, and economic investment. This paper will use the ongoing protracted displacement of over a million Iraqis to highlight the inter-related nature of the different post-war recovery processes, and the need to consider them in tandem rather than individually.
Without an inter-disciplinary approach that brings in political, social, legal, and economic considerations, Iraq will remain vulnerable and prone to prolonged insecurity.
Author: Jacob Eriksson (University of York)
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Panel / Debating the American Empire post-Bush Katie AdieSponsor: US Foreign Policy Working GroupConvener: Tom Watts (Royal Holloway University)Chair: Biegon Rubrick (University of Kent )Discussant: Biegon Rubrick (University of Kent )
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Since WWII, women have increasingly been “included” in the American military through expanding roles and greater presence. While the “inclusion” of women is usually narrated as a progressive and liberal development; taking a more expansive view, this paper locates it in the history of wars fought by the United States during the post-WWII era. It argues that the increased “inclusion” of female American soldiers has been enabled by processes of domestic and international “exclusion” which, when studied, reveal the American empire’s “faces of domination”. While the “right to fight” is a right to be killed and grieved; it is also a right for American military women to kill "the other”. Throughout the ongoing integration of women into the US military, the US has been constituting/securitising/warring against enemies as “racial menaces” — deviant, threatening but inherently inferior. As this paper argues, the presence of military women is often used to demonstrate the “soft” in a war, constituting the paradoxical assemblage of conflicting tendencies and sensibilities inherent in the US post-war empire.
Author: Rachel (Ruixuan) Zhou (LSE) -
This paper seeks to explain a major puzzle in contemporary American foreign and counterterrorism policy: why has the United States continued to spend billions of dollars training and equipping foreign security forces despite the well documented failures of these activities? The use of military assistance is generally explained as an attempt to reduce the financial, military and political costs of overseas military intervention. Revisionist historians and historical materialist informed scholars, which this paper takes as the starting point for its analysis, have also argued that military assistance has been a key tool of imperial policing and the defence of preferred forms of political economy throughout the global south. Building on these more critical perspectives, this paper advances an alternative theoretical informed explanation for the continued reliance on military assistance. It argues that the US’s reliance on military assistance reflects a major vulnerability of the American Empire: its reproduction through a system of sovereign states rather than the imposition of direct territorial control. In connecting these bodies of literature, this paper makes a significant contribution to two debates. The first, on military assistance as a key tool of contemporary US foreign and counterterrorism policy. The second, on the continued relevance of Empire as a conceptual framework for studying the character, spatialities and vulnerabilities of American power.
Author: Tom Watts (Royal Holloway University) -
This article makes a contribution to the literature on the US empire and its contradictions. Scholars believe that geographical distance, alliances as opposed to direct rule, and military overstretch represent limits to US imperial power. Although this paper does not disagree with these accounts, it places more emphasis on a structural conundrum of US imperialism. While the strategy of liberal hegemony has been highly beneficial to the US, its mission to exporting capitalism tends to cause the rise of technological – and military – rivals. Furthermore, it leads to irreconcilable dilemmas between economic and security interests. If in the past the US managed to undermine challenges stemming from Japan and Germany, Washington, D.C. is at pain with finding a coherent strategy to tackle China’s rise. In its first part, the article provides a systemic analysis of why US grand strategy leads to an imperial “blowback”. Compared to Chalmers Johnson’s approach, the paper’s point of departure is the intersection between the international system of states and a transnational capitalist economy. The case-study shows that there is strategic continuity but tactical change between Obama and Trump in their foreign economic policy towards China. Discontinuities, the paper finds, are determined by the presidents’ diverging worldviews.
Author: Zeno Leoni (Kings College London)
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Panel / Decentring Western Narratives of International Relations in Research and Teaching: Problems, Progress and Prospects Martin Luther KingSponsor: International Relations as a Social Science Working GroupConvener: Catherine Owen (University of Exeter)Chair: Bernardino Leon Reyes (Sciences Po)Discussant: Marco Vieira (University of Birmingham)
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Our paper provides a comparative analysis of the thinking on ‘polarity’ within Russian and American discourses on international relations (IR). Polarity is regarded as a basic building block of the realist theory of IR. This paper reveals it has taken on an intellectual life of its own within Russia. Combining in-depth interviews with Russian academics in IR departments in Moscow and St. Petersburg with the analysis of key texts in American and Russian realist thought, we explore a fundamental divergence in the conceptions of “multipolarity” between these national contexts. We argue this conceptual pluralism poses a challenge to academics and practitioners who may otherwise believe they are speaking the same, universal language of IR. The conceptual differences between American and Russian realisms cut so deep there seems to be no common ground for dialogue. This finding prompts us to reconsider the possibilities and limits of a Global IR.
Authors: Iain Ferguson (National Research University - Higher School of Economics) , Andrej Krickovic (National Research University - Higher School of Economics)* -
This paper is motivated by an observation that contemporary reflection on the discipline of International Relations (IR), its theoretical debates and knowledge practices does not accommodate questions about the socio-political context of knowledge production. However, it is only through an in-depth engagement with the process and context of knowledge production, that we can understand specific knowledge claims and take into consideration the fact that some may be silenced or suppressed. The most obvious challenge for the exploration of the context of knowledge-making is how to define the components of a given setting and which aspects to prioritise. In this paper, I present a framework for analysing the socio-political context of the knowledge production endeavour. The framework relies on a critical engagement with Ole Wæver’s first (and, to date, only) ‘explanatory model’ for studying IR from a sociology of knowledge perspective (Wæver 1998, 694-695). I propose developing Wæver’s model with the help of new insights from the sociology of sciences (Mulkay 1979; Bloor 1991) and social sciences (Sokolov 2018). The framework is composed of three sections: (1) state–society relations, (2) historic (dis)continuity and (3) epistemic practices and the communication of research that are further broken down into more specific components. Rather than an explanatory model, I propose an exploratory framework, which aims to guide the study of socio-political context and its influence on knowledge produced in academia. The purpose is not to avoid ambiguity, or to suggest that the processes the model helps to map are static, but rather to stimulate thinking about aspects that have not occupied the horizon of reflection about knowledge-making.
Author: Katarzyna Kaczmarska (University of Edinburgh) -
This paper explores approaches taken by researchers and teachers of International Relations around the world to the Global IR agenda, which promotes the decentring of Western narratives and epistemologies of world politics. Based on over 30 qualitative interviews with IR academics working at institutions in East Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa, we present a broad picture of the conflicted relationship to dominant forms of knowledge in IR, which are simultaneously recognised as constituting the disciplinary core while presenting only a partial picture of the ‘global’. We consider how local scholars approach and teach the IR canon, the challenges and obstacles involved in developing local scholarship, and the disciplinary gatekeeping experienced by local IR communities. Our research suggests that the Global IR agenda is not simply a theoretical or epistemological question, but a deeply political one. It reveals how presenting a dichotomy between Western and non-Western forms of knowledge can fuel the weaponisation of ‘local knowledge’ in service of nationalistic or hegemonic political agendas or reinforce already existing hierarchies in the production of knowledge about world politics. Only in a few cases are scholars able to utilise the Global IR agenda for overcoming both domestic and international structures of power.
Authors: Beverley Loke (University of Exeter)* , Catherine Owen (University of Exeter) -
The visibility of non-Western theories, concepts, and ideas has increased in IR in the last decade due to the postcolonial critiques of the Eurocentrism of IR and the ongoing calls for diversity. As a result, IR has been enriched with new concepts and theories from across the world. This paper builds upon this rich academic output, but shifts the focus from a further expansion of non-Western approaches to a focus on non-Western agency in world politics. While the silent assumption of the non-West’s lack of agency embedded in IR theories has been criticized (Hobson 2012) together with the reification of non-Western agency through critical theories’ critique of Eurocentrism, the exploration of non-Western agency in world politics has continued to remain scarce (Hobson and Alinejad 2017; Alejandro 2018). This paper aims to contribute in addressing this gap by 1) mapping the epistemological, theoretical and empirical rationale behind the need to account for non-Western agency; 2) reviewing the epistemic obstacles that have traditionally prevented IR scholars from accounting for non-Western agency; 3) demonstrating how we can overcome these challenges in practice.
Authors: Audrey Alejandro (London School of Economics and Political Science) , Anahita Arian (University of Erfurt)
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Panel / Defence Industries and Technology in Europe Parsons RoomSponsor: European Security Working GroupConveners: Arantza Gomez Arana (Birmingham City University) , Jocelyn Mawdsley (Newcastle University) , Helena Farrand Carrapico (Northumbria University)Chair: Nele Marianne Ewers-Peters
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In December 2019, NATO finally declared space an ‘operational domain’. While space is becoming even more contested and the threats ever more varied (ranging from kinetic, electronic to cyber), traditional deterrence approaches are no longer appropriate. Yet, there is little in the literature examining theoretical or policy implications in terms of applying deterrence theory to the domain of space and in connection to collective security organisations. Michael Krepon (2013) defines space deterrence as ‘deterring harmful actions by whatever means against national assets in space and assets that support space operations’. Applying this to the collective security level, this paper seeks to investigate the extent to which the US and its European allies can ‘both minimize the risk of inadvertent escalation and maximize the effectiveness of deterrence and defense against advertent escalation’ (Harrison et al, 2017). This paper is a first step into examining the theoretical implications of what space deterrence means at the collective security level. While a second goal is to assess implications that stem from challenges posed by ‘attribution’, ‘reversibility’, ‘resilience’ and ‘thresholds’ and applying these to more tailored and contemporary deterrence strategies.
Author: Simon J. Smith (Staffordshire University) -
In this paper we argue that the emergence of the European Defence Research Programme (EDRP) can only partially be explained by the neofunctionalist logic of spillover. Similarly, while activist critiques of the processes and the proximity of beneficiaries to policy-making raise important and under-studied issues, they too miss part of the wider picture. This is not simply a case of lobby capture. Instead, we suggest that drawing on Science and Technology Studies and the concept of socio-technical imaginaries helps to reveal how a particular future vision of defence technology has embedded itself into EU thinking over decades, and currently is gaining material reality in the EDRP. We argue that this is problematic but that our reading opens up space for challenge by those who disagree with the EDRP, as has been the case with other visions of technology-driven futures.
Authors: Jocelyn Mawdsley (Newcastle University) , Bruno Oliveira Martins (PRIO)* -
Small states are often considered rule takers, rather than rule makers in international relations. Within Europe, the membership in the EU and NATO has helped small states “punch above their weight” but they still remain structurally disadvantaged. Small states have less personnel, narrower expertise and often rely on external actors for information and advice, be it other countries, institutions, or private actors.
This paper aims to study the role of private actors, companies and associations of the defence industry, in shaping small states’ position on PESCO. PESCO sits on the intersection between defence strategy and industrial policy. Looking at Czechia and Portugal, two PESCO members of similar size but different defence industry tradition, it asks how policymaking changes when significant private expertise and interest is present or absent. Anchored in the literature on small states and foreign policy analysis, the paper builds on document analysis and semi-structured interviews with representatives of MoDs, MFAs as well as the defence industry. It tests the hypothesis that the defence industry provided crucial input in small state’s decision-making on PESCO by feeding in expertise and information that is otherwise lacking and thus managed to shape the small state’s policy to its advantage.
Authors: Tomas Weiss (Charles University) , Licínia Simão (University of Coimbra)* , Miroslava Pěčková (Charles University)* -
The aim of this paper is to discuss how legal studies on cybersecurity in the EU will develop in view of the ever-changing and more internationalized cyberspace. Cybersecurity has become a key political topic and yet still not given enough attention by international studies’ as well as legal scholars. The Chapter will use qualitative data to present the legal measures that have been taken on board by the EU and the other main actors worldwide such as the US, China and Russia. The US and China are leaders in developing AI, 5G and IoT services, while the EU has been lagging behind. On the other hand, European legislation on the matter is fast-developing, while the other states have taken less restrictive legal approaches. In the EU, cybersecurity is always at the frontline when tackling the challenges of the digital agenda. The Union is a pioneer legislator because of the NIS Directive, the Cybersecurity Act, the proposal for European Cybersecurity Network and a Competence Centre, the Recommendation on 5G, etc. This level of complexity of legislation is not observed in the other countries analysed. It has also remained underestimated when studying the broader topic of security in the EU.
The question is will European academia become a leader in the field in the years to follow? Will international studies embrace the topic of cybersecurity as an important one or will it remain a side issue?
Author: Eva Saeva (Newcastle Law School)
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Panel / Discourses of Counter-Radicalisation and Counter-Terrorism: Critical Approaches Dobson RoomSponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working GroupConveners: Raquel de Silva (University of Birmingham) , Alice Martini , Tom Pettinger (University of Warwick)Chair: Tom Pettinger (University of Warwick)Discussant: Raquel de Silva (University of Birmingham)
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Subsequent to the Christchurch attack in March 2019, right-wing extremism has been broadly noted by academics and security analysts. Critics argue that in addition to Islamic terrorism, right-wing extremism has already become a truly and deadly threat in many Western countries. In order to tackle the threats posed by right-wing extremism and radical extremists, government authorities in the U.S. and many European countries have recently prompted and implemented some specific policies, such as enhancing the law-enforcement resources devoted to tracking and investigating right-wing extremism, and monitoring online activities related to right-wing extremist thought and ideology. By examining the discursive shift of terrorism and extremism, this paper argues and suggests that the concept of right-wing extremism indeed has different meaning in the U.S. and European countries, and therefore, the governmental and societal responses in the U.S. and European countries—both discursively and materially—should be better understood and discussed in different social and cultural contexts. For the U.S., right-wing extremism usually refers to white supremacy, racial violence, domestic terrorism, and gun control. However, for many European countries, right-wing extremism often refers to nationalism, xenophobia, neo-fascism (or neo-Nazism), and far-right populism.
Author: Chin-Kuei Tsui (Graduate Institute of International Politics, National Chung-Hsing University, Taiwan (R.O.C.)) -
In the United Kingdom (UK) terrorism is presented, by the British government, as one of the most serious and dangerous threats to national security which justified the introduction of legislative, political and operational measures. The State has the responsibility to protect individuals from threats to security but the duty to protect shouldn’t compromise the respect for civil liberties and fundamental human rights. The British securitizing narrative presents terrorism as an existential threat requiring emergency action and exceptional measures because, at any moment, the country can be the target of an attack. This narrative favours the creation of a state of emergency characterized by a climate of insecurity, instability, fear and suspicion in which surveillance has emerged as a key technological tool in the prevention of terrorism. Surveillance practices have been legitimized by the ‘obligation’ to protect citizens and to prevent, or respond to, security threats. While action by States is necessary to prevent and effectively sanction terrorist acts, not all means are justifiable. As surveillance powers increase, giving to the British government access to several aspects of the daily lives of its citizens, serious restrictions to the full enjoyment of the right to privacy emerge. To answer the research question: “In the context of the UK's fight against terrorism, what are the effects of the surveillance practices on the respect for the right to privacy of British citizens?” we will apply the theoretical frameworks of the Copenhagen School, by the centrality it gives to the discursive act and for the recognition of the intersubjective nature of the security threats, and the Paris School for its attention to security practices. Through Critical Discourse Analysis we intend to analyse the British securitizing narrative since the presentation and characterization of the terrorist threat by the British political elite and security professionals can influence the perception of the threat. Our aim is to better understand how the securitizing narrative facilitates and legitimates surveillance practices that, in turn, may compromise the right to privacy of British citizens.
Author: Romana Pinhal (PhD candidate University of Minho) -
Terrorists have a strategic interest in rendering themselves visible or invisible at different times in different ways (see Mortensen 2019: 911), for example making themselves visible to spread terror, or invisible to ensure their own safety. As the scholarship demonstrates, terrorism is both a highly gendered realm, with terrorists’ representations following deeply gendered narratives, and a highly visual phenomenon. In this article, I explore the role of gender in rendering terrorism and terrorists (in)visible. Specifically, I argue that terrorists break or conform to dominant gender roles in their visual self-representations to render themselves (in)visible according to their strategic goals. From the Islamic State’s pictures of "jihadi brides" plastered over newspapers’ front pages, to the right-wing movement "Identitäre Bewegung" (linked to the recent terror attack in New Zealand) having left the militarised masculine Neonazi look behind in favour of images of modern, urban men in "hipster" style, to male members of Boko Haram dressing up as women to gain access to certain areas – gender matters to terrorism’s (in)visibility. Within a poststructuralist-feminist framework, I discuss this intersection of visuality, terrorism and gender that can contribute to understanding terrorists’ communications and thus also enable more effective counter-terrorism messaging.
Author: Antonia Niehuss (University of St Andrews) -
The British government’s counter-terrorism policy Prevent Duty puts a legal obligation on employees of specified public authorities to monitor people for signs of radicalisation and to keep them from being drawn into terrorism. The policy has been a point of contention within public discourse with policymakers, academics, and practitioners championing or critiquing the policy. However, beyond the realm of public discourse, there seems to be a grudging consent for Prevent policing amongst the people who have to implement it. This paper aims to explore how this consent is manufactured and what does this tell us about the changing nature of counter-terrorism policing in civic life.
Using Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, this paper will demonstrate that the Prevent Duty is being transformed from a coercive juridical instrument into a ‘common sense’ approach by the co-optation of practices such as safeguarding within health, education, and social work sectors. This enquiry is informed by the findings of semi-structured interviews conducted with Prevent co-ordinators and employees of specified authorities in the north of England. These interviews provide insights into how counter-terrorism monitoring is normalised within civic spaces and the nature of consent for this policing, ranging from wholehearted approval to reluctant adoption of Prevent by social workers and health and education practitioners.
Gramsci’s framework of hegemony is useful for this study because it not only explains how the Prevent Duty is neutralised from a policing tool into an act of civic duty, it also helps us chart a course for this hegemonic regime which is moving beyond specific sectors in the society to encompass entire communities of counter-terrorism citizens conducting surveillance as ‘common sense’ practice.
Author: Amna Kaleem (University of Sheffield) -
Since UK’s counter-radicalisation strategy Prevent was first released in 2006, almost all research on Prevent shows that it is problematic on the grounds that it does not work, creates suspected communities, challenges Britain’s democracy, and makes a negative impact on Muslim communities by alienating them to the country that they live in. Not only the academic circles but also the NGOs and minorities have criticised the Prevent strategy harshly. However, British policy makers insist on pursuing the Prevent strategy, and the reason for this persistence is almost vague. Despite all the debates, the UK governments have expanded the Prevent strategy with new updates since 2006, and this extension included even schools, universities, and hospitals in 2011. Moreover, the last two revisions of Prevent in 2011 and 2018 put the integration of immigrants and immigrant-origin British citizens into the centre of Prevent, as if they pose a threat to the national security of the UK. This expansion and focus on integration in Prevent made it crucial to have an insight into the security and threat perceptions of British elites who are involved in producing or implementing security policies. A clear view of those perceptions will be quite helpful to understand the convergence of integration and counter-terrorism. Therefore, this study is concerned with understanding British policy makers’ security and threat perceptions that make them first create the Prevent policy and then believe that it is a successful strategy, and the way and reason that they link a counter-terrorism policy to integration, and migration. To this end, answering the following three main questions will consist the basis of this study. First, what shapes British policymakers’ views of Prevent as an effective strategy and a key component of UK counter-terrorism? Second, what visions of security and threat underpin the creation of Prevent? Finally, how do integration and immigration issues animate policymaking around Prevent? To provide answers for these questions semi-structured elite interviews with MPs, security officials, bureaucrats, and former ministers have been carried out. The non-probability sampling method has been used to choose the interviewees, and the qualitative data software NVivo has been used to transcribe the interviews and to analyse the raw data. Three main findings are noteworthy. First, security and threat perceptions play an important role in producing counter-terrorism strategies. Second, the media is quite effective in shaping the British elites’ perceptions. Third, most of the interlocutors strongly believe that Prevent is and should be the backbone of UK’s counter-terrorism strategy, and the success of Prevent relies on integration since they believe radicalisation is the result of lack of integration into the British society.
Author: Evren Altay (University of York)
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Panel / Dystopian Futures? Ontological Security in an Age of Anxiety Armstrong RoomSponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working GroupConvener: Christopher Browning (University of Warwick)Chair: Christopher Browning (University of Warwick)
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A series of recent crises contributed to ontological insecurity in different parts of the world. In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), this took a distinctly geopolitical dimension. Nativist and authoritarian leaders utilised the disruptions to construct CEE’s identity through distancing from ‘the West’. In turn, for the parts of the society identifying as ‘(pro-)Western’, such discourses reignited the tension in seeing ‘Westernness’ both as deeply ingrained civilizational ‘essence’ and as something that can always be taken away. Using Czechia as a case, we show how the discourse of ‘hybrid warfare’ responded to such geopolitical anxieties of the ‘Western’ camp and reinscribed societal divisions in the familiar register of East/West geopolitics. First, by presenting Russia as omnipotent enemy meddling by various means in CEE politics, it enabled the externalisation of domestic dissenters as essentially foreign to the ‘Western’ body: as Russia’s agents or ‘useful idiots’. Second, by positing the weakening and splitting the EU and NATO as Russia’s ultimate goal, it reconstructed ‘the West’ as a coherent geopolitical entity of which Czechia is a part: in this logic, ‘we the Westerners’ are all together a target of Russia’s ‘hybrid’ attacks. The psychosocial and political effects of this discourse are contradictory. While providing ontological security through the reinforced identification with the ‘West’ for some, it also undermines this sense of security by its continuing search for Russia’s ‘Eastern’ influences behind domestic and international woes, thereby reinforcing the existing societal divides and reproducing the sense of insecurity and anxiety.
Authors: Jakub Eberle (Institute of International Relations, Prague) , Jan Daniel (Institute of International Relations, Prague)* -
This paper seeks to shed light on the complex relationship between how insecurity is understood and felt in the everyday and how security encounters are manipulated by political agents for political gain through engaging with populist dystopian narratives. An analytical focus on ontological security in populism recently provided first insights into how populist discourses and performances constitute popular sentiments of anxiety (Browning 2019), and establish a new paradigm of popular sovereignty as real, authoritative and reflecting common sense (Homolar and Steele 2019: 215) as well as how they construct narratives of nostalgia, historic continuity and national belonging (Kinnvall 2019, Suzuki 2019), and how they promote a sense of crisis that may tilt the electoral scales in favour of ‘outsider’ populist candidates (Homolar and Scholz 2019). This paper argues that populist security narratives centred on threat, belonging, and exclusion instil a sense of ontological insecurity by intertwining nostalgia for an idealised past of national greatness with anxiety about economic and demographic change a dystopian future. The ‘seductive rhythm of tragedy and triumph’ (Homolar 2019) integral to such fantasies creates an ‘emotional tension’, turning abstract notions of insecurity into compelling affective narratives of biographical rupture, loss of social status, and elite betrayal that help to mobilize political support.
Author: Alexandra Homolar (University of Warwick) -
Cyber technology enables practices that challenge state actors. More than other challenges that state actors have been facing over the years the cyber domain enables the emergence of effective, efficient, and powerful alternatives to the current state-system practices. As such, it creates fundamental challenges to states' self and identity, putting into question dominant and ingrained narratives of states regarding their roles in the international arena. While International Relations scholars are extensively studying the influence of cyber technology on international politics, not much attention has been paid to the question of how practices the cyber domain enables becomes a challenge to states' self and identity.
I suggest that although rarely used in this context, the emerging concept of ontological security provides a nuanced understanding of the challenges the cyber domain creates for state actors, capturing how it affects their narratives, routines, their sense of home and their emotions. Focusing on these issues is important for achieving a better understanding of questions concerning technology in international relations, but also for advancing the research of ontological security, especially around a number of issues that have not received enough scholarly attention, including the level of analysis, materiality, and time and space.Author: Amir Lupovici (Tel Aviv University) -
In analysing contemporary social and political dilemmas, Slavoj Zizek refers to the demise of symbolic efficiency, Ulrich Beck to the loss of trust and the excoriating effects of “linear doubt” and Julia Kristeva highlights the political and related risks entailed in human subjects remaining “strangers to ourselves”. All three recognise how globalisation and/or the world risk society have heightened anxiety by destabilising established ways of life and forms of identity - especially as these have derived from ideologies of nation, class and ethnicity. While the details of their analyses differ, all three converge in recognising the declining capacity of cultures and institutions to quell anxiety. In turn, all three implicitly recognise an increased incidence of ontological insecurity. Beck (and Giddens) understand this transformative social and political process as one of dis-embedding without re-embedding. As with the demise of symbolic efficiency, dis-embedding from established cultural norms and identities throws a burden of choice upon human subjects. In turn this individualising process burdens human subjects with anxiety that arises from the very obligation to choose and construct an individualised life narrative, without the supportive constraints of stabilised cultural norms and the authority they can command. In this dystopian desert of cultural abandonment, Beck discovers a potential upside in reflexive doubt, Kristeva counters repression, abjection and splitting and projection with sublimation in which anxiety transforms into intensity, creativity and a meditative welcoming of strangeness as the one universal quality that disarms all exclusivist particularisms and Zizek observes a collapse into narcissism. All three implicitly raise the issue of how the anxiety occasioned by a growing sense of ontological insecurity may be defended against. Reflecting upon these three theorists, this paper will argue that the manner in which anxieties are culturally and psychically responded to becomes the leading political issue. Is a cosmopolitanism that welcomes strangeness a redemptive possibility at the level of whole societies? Can Beck’s reflexive doubt displace the hazards heaped upon us by the achievements of linear doubt? Is the demise of symbolic efficiency necessarily the source of “the corrosion of character” and a collapse into the profound misrecognitions of narcissism?
Author: John Cash (University of Melbourne) -
Coping with Species Anxiety: Climate Change, Artificial Intelligence and the Threat of Human Erasure
Understanding how humans respond to anxiety increasingly has been recognised as important for understanding dynamics in international politics. Such has been the core contribution of the introduction of debates about ontological security into the discipline over the last decade or more. This paper shifts the focus of attention away from the central subjects of analysis of much of this literature, focused as it has been on states and nations, either as sources of ontological (in)security for citizens or as sites through which ontological (in)security dynamics are mediated, to the level of humanity. The paper does two things. First, it outlines how contemporary anxieties are increasingly becoming focused on concerns about the very future, even survival, of the human species, a development that is viewed as somewhat novel. In other words, while anxiety is central to the human condition, historically-speaking people have generally felt secure (i) in the idea that humanity has a planet, a world, a global habitable home that would be there in perpetuity irrespective of our own petty conflicts, and (ii) humanity has also generally felt secure that humans were the pre-eminent intelligent beings, the ultimate subjects and agents. Today, however, climate change is fundamentally challenging the first, while advances in technology (not least artificial intelligence) are challenging the second. It is in the light of such recognition – combined with worries about other threats, such as of global health pandemics and the emergence of antibiotic resistant diseases – that anxieties mediated through the level of the species have arisen. Such anxieties may find expression at the level of the individual, but also increasingly exhibit collectivised and transnational dimensions. For some people they have become a destabilising source of dread and fundamentally debilitating, as evident in the increasing diagnosis by clinicians of ‘eco-anxiety’ amongst their patients, or the debilitating sense of fear, alienation and dread many people experience in the face of the onslaught of new technologies.
Second, the paper maps out some of the different responses that such anxieties have generated. Amongst others, this includes attempts to reassert a sense of control, not least through an embrace of ‘(technological) fetishisation’, as in regard to climate change where the argument is often made that ‘green capitalism’ will save us, or alternatively in discourses of humanity escaping a dying planet through the colonisation of other celestial bodies. In such discourses humanity ultimately wins out, even while for most people this will be a purely vicarious and pyrrhic victory. The extreme alternative is ‘(technological) fatalism’ in which species anxieties are subsumed through an embrace of dystopian futures. In other words, if framed as fatalistic and inevitable, rather than a matter of human choices, then there is less space for anxiety. The paper discusses how both these responses have become core (contending) themes across global popular culture, and where such production operates as both a form of collective therapy, but also a source of anxiety production. The paper then ends by discussing some of the political and moral implications of these developments.
Author: Christopher Browning (University of Warwick)
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Panel / Foreign Policy Decision-Making Bewick RoomSponsor: Foreign Policy Working GroupConvener: FPWG Working groupChair: David Houghton (US Naval War College)
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Australia-UK relations were undergoing a revival even before the politics of Brexit accelerated and facilitated enhanced cooperation and trade between the two countries. Using discourse analysis, this paper interrogates whether the narrative re-alignment of the UK’s place in the world – given name in 2017 as ‘Global Britain’ – was encouraged and reciprocated in Australia. By analysing parliamentary debates, speeches by senior figures and commentary from the party-in-the-media, this paper illustrates the way that the prospect of a UK withdrawal from the European Union was received and advanced in Australia between 2013 and 2020. In particular it analyses the place of the Anglosphere idea in generating transnational support for Brexit and Global Britain in Australia. Whereas government MPs in the UK readily sought recourse to narratives of the past to legitimise the UK’s exit from the EU and courting of Anglosphere countries (Eaton, 2019), this veneration of the past was less evident in Australian public discourse, complicated as that was by a series of ‘betrayals’ by the UK in 1915, 1942 and 1973. Most Australian public figures were attracted by the prospect of new markets opening up in the wake of a UK withdrawal from the EU. Nevertheless, the alacrity with which Australian policy-makers pursued a new free trade deal with the UK, even whilst negotiating an FTA with the EU, bears out the logic of appropriateness inherent in constructivist understandings of IR.
Author: Ben Wellings (Monash University) -
This paper seeks to discuss the Brazilian diplomatic capacities and their influence on the foreign policy contents from a comparative perspective. The excellence of Brazilian diplomatic service is well known, a condition underlined both in academic texts and in political and diplomatic circles. In fact, Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Itamaraty) stands out for its quality and professionalization, bringing together all the conditions pointed out in the literature as characteristics of the concept of bureaucratic quality, namely: meritocracy, prediction, long-term careers, rules of inclusion and exclusion that prevent arbitrary substitutions, internal promotion, professionals able to act as experts or as generalists, professionals protected from external influences, control through legal and administrative rules. As underlined by the literature on state capacities, however, bureaucratic capacities are a process and their permanence in time is therefore variable. Likewise governments design different objectives - both domestic and foreign - for the state using their current capacities to implement them or trying to create new ones. Based on the debate on state capacities and on the premise of their transience as well as the transience of the objectives pursued by the state, this paper seeks to compare the reforms in Itamaraty organizational structure carried out during the Luiz Inácio “Lula”da Silva (2003-2010) and Dilma Roussef (2011-2016) governments with the ongoing Jair Bolsonaro administration (2019-2022) and their association with the main foreign policy goals of each government.
Authors: Leticia Pinheiro , Leandro Santos (IESP/UERJ)* -
Since 1947 - with the passage of the National Security Act – the U.S. Congress has attempted to compel the President to listen to a broader range of advice before making critical foreign policy decisions, and the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols act tried to further streamline this process. Some have utilized the NSC well, most notably Dwight Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush. Other U.S. presidents have hardly used it at all, with Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson coming most readily to mind. The approach taken by Donald Trump most closely resembles the informal ‘Tuesday Lunch’ meetings of Johnson and Ronald Reagan’s ‘one page’ approach to government, but it goes beyond that approach by utilizing an extremely fluid and ad hoc group of advisers as opposed to the small but stable groups used by Johnson and Reagan. The ‘government by tweet’ approach also most obviously differs from what previous presidents have done. But does this approach actually work in an instrumental sense? This paper argues that – while tweeting is useful for setting the overall direction of governmental activity and is similar in some ways to the manner in which Reagan would set overall goals but would leave all details to others - it fails to take account of the fact that American government is not a unitary whole but a broad array of organizations, many of which pull in different directions. These organizations may also successfully ‘shade’ and interpret higher-level decisions in an unintended way.
Author: David Houghton (US Naval War College) -
A huge volume of theories trying to analyse how foreign policies is made. However, the dominant theories face substantial criticisms for a. unrealistic assumptions b. poor link between objective and subjective factors c. lack a systematic, scientific, robust framework.
This ambitious paper aims to proposes a new model for policy making and analysis, creating an overarching framework that could alleviate the above criticisms.The new foreign policy decision-making (FPDM) framework is in nature an economic model. With the central assumptions of procedural rationality and substantial irrationality, the research highlights the discrepancy between rational state goal of utility maximization and the inability to achieve such goal due to imperfect information and bounded rationality. The research presents two versions of the new framework. The ideal version illustrates the philosophy behind the design of the current political systems, justifying how the systems can in theory mitigate the discrepancy. Then the paper breaks the unrealistic assumptions and introduce several intervening variables. The modified version of the framework better fits the political reality and exposes the weak points which leads to undesirable foreign policy outcome. The paper then compare the two versions of the model, analysing the nature of the weak points and whether they are resolvable.
The new framework has many strengths. In terms of validity, it holds minimum normative assumptions, with the support of both robust economic formulas and calculation and case studies of historical foreign policy decisions. The existing micro/macro IR theories fits well at various kinks of the framework. In term of applications, other than providing an overarching structure for FPMD analysis, it highlights the importance of a capable decision-maker; justify bureaucratic interest orientation of ministries & intra-agency competitions; explain crisis decision making. Additionally, it poses challenges to the existing UK bureaucratic system and provides direction & potential ideas on political system reforms and restructuring.
Author: JINTAO ZHU (London School of Economics) -
Senior decision-makers' lack of receptivity to politically inconvenient or surprising intelligence is often identified in postmortems as a key factor behind a failure to take preventive or early action against threats. The paper aims to develop a new theory for understanding European decision-makers' receptivity to such knowledge claims made by intelligence analysts and other government officials. It does so by drawing on the empirical results of process and knowledge claim tracing across three cases (ISIS, Arabellions and Ukraine) and three actors (UK, Germany, and the EU). The theoretical framework can help us to better conceptualise the factors that shape the dynamic interplay and tension between the the knowledge claims made and who made them, the nature of the intelligence-policy nexus, as well as the political sphere. It combines variables from four strands of academic inquiry, which are rarely brought together: (i) cognitive-psychological factors related to cognitive and motivational biases against such knowledge claims, some of these vary between individuals given their personality traits and professional socialisation, (ii) organisational-cultural factors inherent in foreign policy bureaucracies that act as (dis)incentives to high or low receptivity, (iii) political drivers arising from the distribution of power within each specific system, and finally, (iv), contextual or situational factors arising from system capacity and agenda competition. The framework is helpful not just to explain when to expect high resistance to such knowledge claims, including warnings, but also gives practitioners more realistic options on how and when receptivity can be increased in the short, medium and long-term.
Author: Christoph Meyer (King's College London)
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Panel / Foreign Policy, the State and the Responsibility to Protect Collingwood RoomSponsor: Intervention and Responsibility to Protect Working GroupConvener: IR2P Working groupChair: Pinar Gozen Ercan (Hacettepe University)
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Promoting and protecting the national interest is an explicit element of UK foreign policy. Despite the difficulty of locating a precise definition, foreign policy agents, such as the Prime Minister, have been quick to connect the national interest with other foreign policy goals, such as democracy promotion, human rights protection, and maintaining a global role. Whilst democracy promotion and the UK’s global role have received some scholarly attention, human protection has less so. Through drawing on a conceptualisation of human protection according to the responsibility to protect (R2P) and the protection of civilians (PoC) as more specific forms of human rights protection, this paper will examine the relationship between the national interest and human protection from 2010 to 2019. This is in addition to the relative importance of protection compared to democracy promotion and maintaining a global role. This timeframe is based on the argument in this paper that it was during this period where the national interest became a more explicit goal of UK foreign policy, along with its linkages to human protection. The paper will draw on substantial primary data through content analysis of prime ministerial and foreign secretary speeches and statements (2010-2019). The initial findings reveal a complex, but potentially complementary, relationship between the national interest and human protection. Here, the national interest provides a useful means through which to sell potentially controversial foreign interventions to the British public, the results of which must be understood within the context of interventions undertaken during the New Labour years.
Author: Blake Lawrinson (University of Leeds) -
There have been states in favour of humanitarian intervention as there have been explicitly opposed states who overvalues sovereignty as a right or who is afraid of the abuse of intervention and to be used as a tool for controlling other states. The reason of the latter was because humanitarian intervention lacked the concrete rules and framework to restrict the arbitrariness of states and this triggered the creation of a more criteria-governed and systematic concept, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). However, R2P could not find the support from most of the states whether being UNSC permanent members, as Russia and China, or small states still in fear of being attacked by strong states via R2P as a means for intervention. 150 state leaders included R2P in the 2005 UN World Summit Outcome though without the three pillars it was built on. However, in the end the official support of R2P even by the opponents was established. One of the main opponents, China, has shown its stance towards R2P with the vetoes in UNSC resolutions. In the UNSC resolution 1973 on Libya in 2011 (S/RES/1973), which explicitly mentioned R2P, there was a shift in China’s attitude with the decision to abstain rather than vetoing. After the first UNSC-authorised application of R2P nad weakened the concept, China put forward an alternative concept of “Responsible Protection” (RP) by combining R2P, Just War and the Brazil’s previously suggested alternative, “Responsibility While Protection” (RwP). RP’s basis lies on the stances of China in UNSC and the disputes among the UNSC P5 about the development of any further concept which could be widely accepted.
This paper seeks to analyse the effectiveness of RP on China’s growing role in the world politics as well as her attempts in norm entrepreneurship. To this end, it will be analysed the Chinese statesmen’s discourses on the three concepts, humanitarian intervention, R2P and RP in the UN, both General Assembly and Security Council, since 2001. From the perspective of critical constructivism and as a result of discourse analysis, China’s role in norm entrepreneurship for R2P will be examined.Authors: Zeynep Selin Balcı (Ege University) , Altuğ Günal (Ege University)* -
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) mandates that state sovereignty implies responsibility. When a state fails in its responsibility to protect its population from mass atrocity crimes, the principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect. But while R2P articulates when a military intervention is permissible, it has left a critical question unanswered: how can intervening states morally justify a military intervention to their own citizens? This article explores how the present standard for justifying the use of force under Pillar III has created a moral tension between states’ obligation to their own citizens versus non-citizens. Zeroing in on the normative conceptualisation of state legitimacy, the article analyses how the dominant understanding of the nature of the state and the role of government in liberal political thought (the social contract model), makes the demand of a global duty of humanitarian intervention theoretically impossible. It further discusses Allen Buchanan’s “state as an instrument for justice” model. The article finds that although this model effectively shows why humanitarian intervention is morally legitimate vis-à-vis the intervening states’ own citizens, it is not without its problems. Of particular concern is its failure to demonstrate the special relationship that exists between citizens of a state. Finally, the article sets out what it perceives to be a superior account of the normative conceptualisation of political legitimacy: a so- called “dignity based” model of political legitimacy derived from Ronald Dworkin’s philosophical narrative in Justice for Hedgehogs. The article discusses why the “dignity based” conception of state legitimacy offers a superior model for reconciling governments’ duties towards their own citizens with the existence of a global duty of humanitarian intervention to save non-citizens from the most atrocious crimes.
Author: maria jellinek -
This article explores little chartered territory for the relevance of international human rights law today: Why do liberal states comply (or not) with international norms, or rather, how do they understand compliance by giving meaning to such norms? Adopting a critical constructivist perspective, the research demonstrates that states can be norm makers and norm takers simultaneously — liberal democracies do not have a monopoly on the role of norm maker as their compliance to human rights norms is not a given. Instead their practice and understanding of particular norms and the need to modify and fit norms into the local context are just as complex as those in the post-colonial context. This research uses an empirical case study to disaggregate the discursive and practical understandings of how the UK defines its responsibility to protect Syrians from mass atrocities through the interpretative analysis of official documents and interviews with respondents in Parliament, the FCO, DFID and the Home Office. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the UK is a key player in the international effort to address the Syrian crisis and continues to publicly endorse the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). However, remote from the Syrian crisis, the UK has pursued a path of political transition and regime change despite impossibility and to the detriment of other more pragmatic responses. Thus, the UK has been challenged for having a weak and rhetorical commitment to R2P in practice. The research is the first to empirically reveal the UK’s critical misunderstandings of R2P in an effort to measure the normative impact of R2P on the state’s responses to Syria and therefore, contributes to deeper understanding of how powerful liberal states contest and modify human rights norms despite rhetorical commitment to the aspirations underlying such norms.
Author: Chloë Gilgan (York Law School) -
Abstract
Why is it possible to insist that other states should not commit crimes against humanity against their own populations? Responses to this question are often articulated by an appeal to the universality of our common humanity and the need to protect it, yet frequently without much further clarification. It is thus argued that the existence of a common humanity provides certain moral obligations for both states and individuals when mass atrocity crimes are committed. But to what extent can we say that obligations created by an appeal to common humanity carry moral weight? In addressing this lacuna, the paper will move beyond claims that such crimes are simply ‘conscience-shocking’ in order to better conceptualise the impact these crimes have on the values and ideas that are essential to our existence as human beings. It will be argued that such crimes can be seen to challenge a dual conception of humanity, generating not only a harm against the diversity of humankind but also challenging our distinct humanness, understood through our ability to coexist as political animals, as well as our capacity to develop moral rules. The focus is therefore not to assess the strength of crimes against humanity as a legal concept but instead to theorise the idea of a collective harm by locating the values and beliefs which are directly challenged by crimes against humanity. This will then make it possible to further conceptualise the international scope of such crimes and thus reinforce the moral imperative for the protection of populations from these crimes, by the global community.Author: Samuel Jarvis (York St John University)
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Panel / International Political Economy, Rising Powers and Globalisation Stephenson RoomSponsor: International Political Economy Working GroupConvener: IPEG Working groupChair: Juanita Elias (University of Warwick)Discussant: Joanne Tomkinson (SOAS, University of London)
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Financial cooperation is an effective path for BRICS to take international responsibility and promote global economic and financial governance reform. Since 2009, the expressions of BRICS financial cooperation content have been quite continuous during all the eleven leaders' summits. However, due to each member country faces peculiar political and economic environments at home and abroad in diverse stages, and the ability of BRICS rotating presidency country to set the agenda of has also been varied, the value orientation of financial cooperation among BRICS members in different periods is not completely consistent. While Russia cooperation initiative highlights security to prevent Western countries' sanctions, Brazil, India and South Africa emphasize development to promote new South-South cooperation. China underlines bridge to create the opportunities for peaceful development. As the most primary supplier of financial cooperation human resources and monetary capital, whether China's financial industry can successfully achieve structural adjustment in accelerating opening-up background is the key to determining whether BRICS financial cooperation could achieve the expected goals.
Author: Jia Luo (Jiangxi Normal University) -
In only three years apart, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced two ambitious programmes: the Belt and Road Initiative (2013), which builds infrastructure and trade networks connecting Asia, Europe and Africa, and the creation of 19 mega city-clusters in China as new sites for economic growth (2016). This paper introduces the theoretical framework of “grand strategy of spatial reconfiguration” to explain the relationship of these two regionalist programmes. It argues that the Belt and Road Initiative and city-clusters are, respectively, the outward and inward dimensions of China’s grand strategy of spatial reconfiguration, which serves to overcome its long-standing bureaucratic fragmentation and increase the competitiveness of its subnational regions. This paper consists of three sections. The first section introduces the theoretical framework, which is developed based on existing theories of grand strategy in international relations and spatial reconfiguration in political geography. This framework is applied to evaluate the Belt and Road Initiative and city-clusters in the second section. The third section consists of a case study of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, which is destined to become China’s “world-class city cluster.” It is found that Beijing makes use of the imperative of “aligning” with the Belt and Road Initiative, which is upheld as a nationalistic foreign policy that cannot fail, to impose powerful pressure on local governments to pursue political, economic and social integration, so that diverse localities can be unified as a single market and a launchpad for the “21st century maritime silk road.”
Author: Olivia Cheung (The University of Warwick) -
Neoliberalism and the rise of an ‘anti-global’ atavistic nationalism in contemporary global politics
Today, the world is facing a retreat from the liberal global order and is heading towards a pseudo-democratic brand of politics which has been spearheaded by ultra-nationalist sentiments. Global freedom has declined significantly along with an erosion of political institutions in many present-day countries. This study examines the recent rise of atavistic nationalism in contemporary global politics against the backdrop of the persistence of neoliberalism as a socio-economic policy option in many nation-states across the world. By employing mixed research methods with a special emphasis on hermeneutic content analysis, this study argues that the contemporary recourse towards atavistic nationalism in various nation-states is due to the generation of social and economic insecurities in the society. It also makes use of statistical analysis to examine the socio-economic impact of neoliberal public policies in many nation-states and demonstrates that the rise in such insecurities in societies are directly related to the promotion of neoliberal policies in the socio-economic policy options of various nation-states. Following an in-depth multi-dimensional analysis of the results, some recommendations on containing the proliferation of atavistic nationalism are presented as well.
Author: AKASH BHAGAT (Jawaharlal Nehru University) -
Since its inception, India has had a unique approach to international organizations. It has deposed a lot of faith in the multilateral system in upholding the principles, rules and decision-making procedures in creating a just and egalitarian international order. This conviction was strongly seen during the Nehruvian years through the policy of non-alignment. Through non-alignment, Nehru sought to carve out a role of India, different from other decolonized countries. It was an approach that gave primacy to values such as territorial sovereignty, non-interference along with moral and ethical authority. Its engagement with the developed world was one of principled distance and protectionism. This approach was reified by India through an inward-looking trade substituting economy focusing on building its own indigenous industries. However, even at this time India recognized the importance of participation in multilateral trading arrangements and was unwilling to forgo potential gains from this system. This paper will try to analyze the role India has carved for itself over the years in the global trading order. Along with the mutually co-constitutive relationship between India and the WTO and the impact India has made on the working of the institution and the institution has had on India as a nation. This paper will try to through a constructivist analysis look at India’s role within the larger context of the enduring trends of developing country participation and coalition formation in the global trading order.
Author: Abhishank Mishra (Jawaharlal Nehru University )
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Panel / New Avenues for Securitization of Migration Politics History RoomSponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working GroupConvener: Maria Koinova (University of Warwick)Chair: Amanda Beattie (Aston University)Discussant: Andonea Dickson (Queen Mary University of London)
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The proposed study is going to include the Afghan refugee question into a wider debate. Even after discussing each and every framework of a refugee crisis such as cultural and economic aspects, political borders and boundaries, national and international institutions, human rights factor and putting a gender lens, the crisis is unlikely to be solved in near future. The study is going to discuss what is missing in the current refugee debate and how other aspects of refugee studies can be included in international relations.
Thousands of Afghans risk their lives daily by crossing borders in search of a better life. During 2015, millions of these people arrived in Europe. This study provides a critical overview of recent afghan migration flows and offers answers as to why people flee, what happens during their flight and investigates the various responses to mass migratory movements. The proposed study discusses on the reasons why migration should be examined critically.
The afghan mobilization has been deteriorated by the failure of the international human rights instruments and migration frameworks. The securitization of migrations in the European Union (EU) with the current migratory crisis, through the adoption of exceptional measures that go beyond the sphere of normal politics and the adoption of what might be considered some legally questionable measures for the Afghans.
Nevertheless, the adoption of these measures so far has not helped to solve the humanitarian crisis, rather proved the inability of the EU as an effective mechanism. These paper discuses how the securitization approach of the EU failed to adopt a coherent and comprehensive strategy regarding migration management.
Since 2011, the Afghans constitute one of the most important refugee populations since the Soviet invention. The development of restrictive migration policies in the neighboring countries and a bleak future for the Afghanistan led the Afghans travel to a far-land. What becomes apparent through case studies such as these is that despite the brevity of human rights legislation – recognized across most of the developed world – states are now implementing pre-emptive measures that effectively neutralize their obligations.
This study explains how the present international mechanism may undermine international protection for asylum claimants and refugees, and potentially contradict the object and purpose of the Refugee Convention.Author: RAJARSHI CHAKRABORTY (PHD SCHOLAR) -
In the early 2000s, South America embarked in the ‘post-neoliberal turn’ which amongst integration endeavours sought to liberalise migration policy. This move enabled the unprecedented recognition of migrants’ human rights. Accordingly, Ecuador, the lead receiving country of asylum seekers, underwent several legal and institutional changes to recognise asylum seekers and refugees’ rights. The constitution included universal citizenship as a principle and recognised the rights to migrate and seek asylum, and equality between Ecuadorians and foreigners. This ‘open doors’ perspective occurred in efforts to challenge the previously dominant securitisation approach. Drawing from Lene Hansen’s (2012) desecuritisation through rearticulation, this paper explores how Colombian asylum seekers were desecuritised in Ecuador in 2007-2010. To this end, it analyses legal instruments, official documents, speeches, and transcripts from governmental elite interviews. Applying desecuritisation to a non-Western case study demonstrates how securitisation practices can be rearticulated into a framework of protection through which previously antagonistic identities are rearticulated. Analysing desecuritisation, how it manifests and under which contextual circumstances emerged, could offer an alternative to mainstream approaches of control. In this way, desecuritisation in this South American country offers comparative avenues for other regions.
Author: Gabriela Patricia Garcia Garcia (University of Aberdeen) -
Over the last decade, Algeria has become a country of transit or final destination of many nationals from West and Central Africa. Although, the evolution of this pattern of migration, which altered the political and security responses by the European and North African countries, Algeria remains a resilient country to the current politics founded on closing borders, readmissions, and probable social and economic development as opposed to its neighbouring countries. However until recently, under the European pressure, Algeria succumbed to this pressure by legally adopting a repressive security and control-oriented approach to curb immigration at any cost with a certain degree of autonomy especially on how they choose to use and implement the European migration policies. Yet, the sub-Saharan migrants have become the new official target of these new policies, portrayed as illegal migrants that represent a threat to the national security and a source of diseases and criminology. Thus, Algeria adopted a new absurd racist law relating to foreigners, which gives the right and allows the government to expel anyone deemed a threat to public security regardless of their status as voluntary migrants, refugees or asylum seekers. In this paper, I aim to explain the Algerian state-level framework to govern immigration, particularly of sub-Saharan migration. I argue that, in combination with the EU pressure, Algeria has created an institutionalisation of a repressive treatment of these migrants under the cover of government sovereignty, anti-terrorist and security operations. Through the lens of (de)-colonizing migration, the growing securitisation approach of migration and repression performed against the migrants seem to be based on ‘racial’ social categorisation of the world population and part of the rhetoric of modernity and logic of coloniality of power. Moreover, I aim to highlight the impact of the absence of formal human rights reforms and national asylum system that could be contributing to repressive and abusive experiences of detention, deportation, exploitation in human trafficking and smuggling that sub-Saharan migrants endure in the country. Furthermore, I aim to examine the domestic and social variables to explain the mistreatment of the sub-Saharan migrants and the growing sentiment of xenophobia and nativist attitudes towards them
Author: kheira Arrouche (University of Leeds) -
Migration flows have been at the epicentre of political interest for quite some time. The latest developments in the geopolitical arena, in particular the war in Syria and the displaced populations, in conjunction with the instrumentalisation of migration as a diplomatic tool by states, necessitate an informed research agenda on this particular subject. According to the UNHCR by June 2019 70.8 million individuals, out of which 25.4 refugees, were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution and conflicts. 60% of all arrivals towards Europe were registered via the Eastern Mediterranean route in Cyprus, Bulgaria and Greece and 29% of individuals have arrived via the Western Mediterranean route to Spain and the remaining 11% crossed the Central Mediterranean and arrived by sea in Italy and Malta. The developing influx of migrants and refugees to Greece, part of the increased migration movement towards the Western world and especially Europe, creates a thought-provoking ever-changing map for exploration and analysis in academia and in policy making.
The way that the EU has been handling the migratory and refugee flows and has addressed essentially a humanitarian crisis has brought to the forefront issues of solidarity within the EU. Burden-sharing and cooperation have been raised as serious issues by countries like Greece, Spain and Italy, which do not trust the other EU member states regarding the reception of migrants and refugees. These developments seriously undermine the cohesion and the credibility of the EU, and very importantly there is lack of an organised management of the migration and refugee flows.
At the same time securitisation of migration that is translated to the necessity of taking extraordinary measures in the name of security, is the main modus operandi of the EU migration management system. The intensification and militarisation of border controls in the Mediterranean, the operation of military forces, the use of ‘extraordinary measures’ and the expansion of detention centres consist of the new EU migration management map. Along with the tightening and biometricisation of border controls, externalisation of migration has been one of the major routes for the EU to handle the issue. This means ‘distancing’ the problem and shifting responsibility to third countries.
The purpose of this paper is to look into the migratory and refugee flows through the prism of securitisation, and to particularly focus on two elements that characterise the EU’s migration management, i.e. the absence of burden-sharing and the externalisation of migration. The case of Greece, as an entry point is going to be used in order to exemplify the EU practices at the European borders.Author: FOTEINI KALANTZI (University of Oxford)
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Panel / Populism in South East Europe Swan RoomSponsor: South East Europe Working GroupConvener: Caglar Ezikoglu (Cankiri Karatekin University)Chair: Caglar Ezikoglu (Cankiri Karatekin University)Discussant: Jessie Barton Hronešová (University of Oxford)
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Until just recently, research on populism in Turkey focused mainly on the AKP and Erdoğan’s political strategy. But as the support for the ruling party decreases, other forces got a new chance to prove themselves capable of providing a powerful opposition. The local elections of 2019 brought surprising success for the CHP and its municipal candidate in Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu. But rather than presenting a clear agenda, İmamoğlu‘s strategy remains vague. His very simple slogan “Everything will be great” mobilized cross-party support, but does he really have the potential to fundamentally change the political system of Turkey, or is the CHP simply presenting a superficial strategy aiming at anti-AKP sentiments in order to take back the state apparatus? The paper aims to investigate the development of Istanbul’s municipality as an oppositional stronghold and the challenges it faces by the central government. I’m going to evaluate the political measures implemented by the İmamoğlu administration during its first year, comparing voters expectations and campaign promises with the practical application. Furthermore, I’m going to analyse the differences with the AKP.
Author: Svenja Huck (Humboldt University ) -
The main topic of this paper was to how it can be explained the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) paradigm shift to nationalism in Turkish politics since 2014. The AKP has been one of the most successful examples for ensuring its political survival in Turkish politics as compared to other political parties. The main secret to this success was to keep the voter base (nominal selectorate) as large as possible in the Bruce Bueno De Mesquita’s Selectorate Theory, which was used throughout this paper. This party was able to follow three different policies in three different periods and succeed in elections, keeping the nominal selectorate large and maintaining its survival until 2014.
The analysis of the 2014 presidential election results showed that the AKP government must enter a new crossroads. Two actors; Fethullah Gülen Movement and Kurds who had maintained their good relations during AKP’s clash with the Kemalist establishment before 2014, could be a threat to the AKP's political survival for the post-2014 period. In such a picture, it would be inevitable for the AKP’s paradigm shift to a more nationalist line. This paper aims to reveal the cause-effect mechanism between the Islamist-nationalist coalition and the AKP's survival.
Author: Caglar Ezikoglu (Cankiri Karatekin University) -
The Greek adjustment program was initiated in 2009 after statistics on budget deficit and public debt were found to have been subjected to prolonged and excessive creative accounting. No doubt the two parties (the conservative New Democracy and Pan-Hellenic Socialist Party) that had dominated politics since the restoration of democracy in 1974 have had a fair share in overspending and falsifying public accounts. As it is not uncommon, these two parties that had created the crisis were asked to solve it. They did so forming a coalition though the reasons for the failure to create a government of national unity can be debated – partly because the opposition took the non-cooperative populist attitude of “no to everything” that could have been a more sensible alternative. Frequent elections, one can argue some were not really needed, gave democratic legitimacy to the hastily put together adjustment program (rather successive programs) that was designed sporadically and implemented spasmodically defying the lessons of international experience, admittedly under pressure from the EU and the international lenders. The coalition’s attempt to combine austerity economics with political promises that paled those put forward by the opposition led to losing the elections in 2015 to another coalition between a self-proclaimed radical left party (SYRIZA), and a far right, albeit not Nazi, party (ANEL). Economic realities hit this opportunistic symbiosis that pursued and intensified the austerity measures already in place that resulted in convincingly losing the elections in 2019 to its perennial nemesis, the New Democracy party. This paper (a) briefly summarizes the policies and politics pursued till 2015; (b) traces the 2015-2019 measures that combined austerity economics with populist claims that all was done “with the weak in mind”; (c) identifies the economic inconsistencies and ideological contradictions of the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition; (d) argues that it is still debatable whether the deepest and longest recession in modern history was the result of economic incompetence or the self-serving personal interests bordering treason of Greek politicians that, according to the IMF, succeeded at ring-fencing the euro against a sovereign Greek default at costs that fell almost exclusively on Greek citizens; and (e) concludes that, as SYRIZA has failed to bring the change it promised, what the future of left leaning policies can be.
Author: Zafiris Tzannatos (Lebanese Center for Policy Studies) -
Joining the EU is a multi-faceted process for the candidate states which directly influences their domestic politics and therefore this process has been exposed to the influences of populist politics in these countries. Along with Turkey, Western Balkan countries are currently on the agenda EU not only because they are the candidate and potential candidate countries to the EU, but also, they confront multiple challenges that directly affect the EU as well. Ranging from the economic peculiarities of the region to hard and soft security considerations, these challenges lay a proper ground for the prevalence of populist domestic discourse in these countries. Drawing on the media content analysis, this paper aims to elaborate the impact of the EU in Western Balkan countries and Serbia will be the focal point of the study due to its close relations with Russia, which exacerbates the circumstances for populist rhetoric and practices. Main questions to be considered are; does the EU have a role in populist politics and to what extent do the populist leaders use the EU as a leverage in domestic politics in case of candidate countries?
Author: Hatice Yazgan (Cankiri Karatekin University)
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Panel / Review of International Studies Council ChamberSponsor: Review of International StudiesConvener: Kyle Grayson (BISA)Chair: Kyle Grayson (BISA)
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Panel / Security, Coloniality and the Policing of Mobility I: Migration, Citizenship and Race CarilolSponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working GroupConveners: Joe Turner (University of York) , Terri-Anne Teo (Nanyang Technological University)Chair: Terri-Anne Teo (Nanyang Technological University)
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In the late 1970s and 1980s groups across Britain were organizing against the imposition of compulsory passport and visa checks in schools, unemployment offices and hospitals, calling out the charging of certain migrants for NHS care and pointing to the disproportionate effects of these policies on Black and South Asian women. Drawing lines of relation between the treatment of Commonwealth and other Third World migrants in Britain and those living under colonial and apartheid rule elsewhere, activist groups such as ‘No Pass Laws Here!’ argued that British state immigration control and surveillance practices should be understood in relation to the concurrent Pass Laws of apartheid South Africa. Through an analysis of archival material and drawing on literature on imperialism, and racial and carceral capitalism (Bhattacharyya 2018, Danewid 2019, Robinson 1983, Shilliam 2018, Wang 2018), I suggest that the current hostile environment policies should be situated within this British history, and in relation to hostile surveillance regimes in other (post)colonies. Calling into question the ‘newness’ of the hostile environment and any associated nostalgic desire to return to a utopian welfare state of our past, this paper argues that rather than solely a national welfare problem, we are confronted with the grammar of racial capitalism that binds both our subjugation and resistance to it.
Author: Kathryn Medien (University of Cambridge) -
This paper aims to explore what the British Government’s push to expand and intensify the deportation of ‘foreign national criminals’ tell us about the resuscitation of colonial bordering in Northern states. The paper focuses on the metropolitan police and immigration enforcement platform called Operation Nexus which institutionalises the fast tracking of targeted deportations. The scheme is a significant part of the British government’s hostile environment agenda because it allows for the expulsion of suspected foreign national criminals. In doing so it also intensifies the over policing of communities racialised as ‘migrants’. Operation Nexus exemplifies the increasing authoritarian practices of immigration control as it by passes criminal justice procedure and persecution and allows for systematised deportation through foreign policy agreements with commonwealth states. Furthermore, the scheme reveals how the spatialization and racialisation of policing in urban centres in Britain, such as in practices of stop and search or gang surveillance and intelligence gathering, has become tied to the question of international borders. This paper argues that the co-joining of police and immigration enforcement is far from novel but instead represents the intensification of the control of racialised mobility which was central to expansion of European Empire. The paper argues that we need a re-theorisation of borders to better understand how forms of internal colonisation such as policing are bound up with the global/colonial government of mobilities. This means interrogating and challenging how we conceive of sovereignty, race and the history of the control of mobility.
Author: Joe Turner (University of York) -
Postcolonial theories of migration have historically looked at the “influx of migrants to the West from the less affluent countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America; in other words, from postcolonial nations” (Nair 2013). The movements of people across and within the historical postcolony and the role this had played in the lived experience of citizenship is less well understood outside of a few well studied cases (for example South Asia, Chatterji 2012). Latin America offers a rich and fascinating laboratory for the study of postcolonial citizenship, especially within the context of mobility, race and security. In past decades changes in migration policies underwent noticeable shifts from restriction to openness, (Cantor, Freier & Gauci 2015), and more recently – as the public profile of the archetypical migrant to Latin America has changed from European entrepreneur/adventurer, to forced migrant from African, Central American and neighbouring states – towards anew restriction and securitization. The single most profound event to re-orient these debates on postcolonial subjectivities around migration and citizenship in Latin America has been the Venezuelan ‘migrtion crisis’. The influx of 4.5 million Venezuelan citizens to other states is forging new relationships between coloniality, criminalisation and citizen rights. This paper discusses the case of Peru – the second largest receiving country of Venezuelan migration. It examines the tension between two conflicting ideological paradigms: migrants’ human rights and national security, and further examines how far policy diffusion from the metropole - the European Union – contributes to increasing securitization of immigration as a political issue.
Authors: Luisa Feline Freier (Universidad del Pacífico ) , Ayesha Siddiqi (University of Cambridge) -
This article examines the colonising practices of merit-based migration in the context of Singapore. Merit-based immigration regimes create tiers of migration, exacerbating inequality and negatively affecting the rights of migrants. Through a framework of crimmigration, this article argues that vulnerable migrant populations are subject to particular forms of control and regulation based on a constructed notion of ‘merit’ or ‘skill’. Scholarship on crimmigration demonstrates how processes of migration are intrinsically raced, gendered and classed. Neoliberal patterns of migration, combined with a highly stratified merit-based system, dehumanises the migration process for vulnerable migrant populations by creating categories of people on the basis of ‘utility’, while propagating inaccurate stereotypes of ethnic minorities. Market rationalities lend to a crimmigration complex that structures the over-regulation and inadvertent criminalisation of such migrants. Adding to scholarship on crimmigration, this article argues ‘merit-based’ immigration regimes exacerbate racialised effects of crimmigration where those categorised as ‘low-skilled’ are subject to more intense and arbitrary forms of penalties, while placed in vulnerable positions due to their visa statuses. Focusing on the ‘lower-skilled’ segment of the workforce, this paper draws on Singaporean policies towards South Asian temporary migrant construction workers as its case study.
Author: Terri-Anne Teo (Nanyang Technological University) -
In the contemporary international system, various forms of colonial structures (both historic and emerging) interact to produce institutional frameworks that construct some people as trustworthy, some as suspicious. Indeed, if we look at the international system as a whole, some people may find themselves constructed and reconstructed as either suspicious or trustworthy from multiple directions. One to see this is through studying the implications of global migration governance. Through analysis of: visas (requirements for visas as well as acceptance rates), irregular migration dynamics, asylum systems, and internal migration controls (such as barriers to domestic labour markets and welfare systems based on the checking of documents for example), it becomes clear that the heavy migration governance infrastructure cannot be understood only as directed at the governance of human mobility. Rather, it seems to govern access to membership of the global system of mobility. In this paper, I will propose that access to that membership seems to be built on trustworthiness, and non-access to suspiciousness. Furthermore, I will suggest that this sits within colonial and neo-colonial traditions which justify colonial practices on the basis of the trustworthiness or suspiciousness of colonial subjects.
Author: Tendayi Bloom (University of Birmingham)
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Panel / Security, Resistance and Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa Daniel WoodSponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working GroupConvener: Omer Tekdemir (University of Bolton)Chair: Omer Tekdemir (University of Bolton)
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Since the establishment of the modern state on the Arab shore of the Persian Gulf, the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf preferred foreign protection, mainly by the United States, over developing strong, well-equipped militaries. The fear of military coups inspired by those that took place in neighboring Arab countries, such as Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Libya, in the 1950s and 1960s was the main reason behind the underdevelopment of the military architecture in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. With the turn of the 2000s, the military architecture in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf witnessed a massive transformation. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, have indulged in a regional arms race competing over enhancing their military capabilities in terms of both quantity and quality.
This paper addresses the question: Why have Saudi, the UAE, and Qatar indulged in a regional arms race? In answering the research question, the paper argues that the anarchy in the Middle East regional order has instigated a security dilemma for the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf; hence leading to an arms race among Saudi, the UAE, and Qatar. In laying out the argument, the paper starts with providing a conceptual framework to understand the relationship between anarchy, security dilemma, and arms race. I then move on to discuss the anarchy in the Middle East regional system highlighting its three main drivers: crises that hit the region since 2003 and absence of regional leadership, competition among regional powers, and the unreliability of the US as the security guarantor. The following section addresses Saudi and the UAE’s security dilemma that is instigated by the anarchy in the regional system, and Qatar’s security dilemma triggered by Saudi and the UAE’s growing military capabilities. Finally, the paper investigates the arms race in the Persian Gulf focusing on two main, interrelated drivers: enhancing military capabilities, and increasing and strengthening security partnerships.Author: Islam Hassan (Durham University ) -
By problematizing the nature of the complex relationship between tribes in the Syrian area of Manbij and the political and military actors’ tactical, operational, and strategic engagements with tribes during the Syrian war in general, this paper attempts to contextualize the logic of tribal survival and the strategies of co-optation of internal and external actors in the context of the Syrian civil war. The paper seeks to explain the main driving factors behind the relationship between tribes and other political and military actors in Syria during the civil war. More importantly it attempts to shed light on the strategic rationality behind the tribal politics by asking the question of why tribes accept to be co-opted. The research is based on fieldwork that was conducted in Turkey and Syria and, specifically, semi-structured and open-ended interviews with more than 200 high-ranking tribal members.
Author: murat Yeşiltaş (Social Sciences University of Ankara) -
How do economic motivations interact with modes of violence across the wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen? While some groups will fight to promote or defend a particular identity, others fight for economic survival or enrichment. For many more actors, these motivations are tied together. This study develops a framework for comparative analysis of conflict economies at the local level in the MENA region to understand the persistence of open fighting, localized violence and coercion. We show how a conflict economy is embedded within a complex local socio-political system, in which many variables and agendas interact. The literature on conflict economies primarily focuses on state-level dynamics. Little attention has been paid to the development of conflict sub-economies that are specific to certain types of geographies. This study examines three distinct types of conflict sub-economy: (1) capital cities; (2) transit areas and borderlands; and (3) oil-rich areas. Our analysis highlights how each sub-economy creates distinct location-based patterns of resource production, mobilization and allocation to sustain competitive and embedded violence. In challenging the current literature, this framework offers a complementary explanation for armed group membership and armed group behaviour.
Authors: Christine Cheng (War Studies, King's College London) , Tim Eaton (Chatham House) -
In the Middle East, Lebanon is considered a unique example of a somewhat successful and stable power-sharing democracy; a deeply divided society where for three decades a confessional framework reserves equal political representation for Muslims and Christians. Since 2006, however, the opposition led by Hezbollah pleaded for a so-called guaranteeing third vote, and a Cabinet minority veto was finally obtained under the 2008 Doha Agreement. Since then, little international discussion has been done neither on how the group built its narrative to obtain the blocking third, nor on its actual behaviour in a consensus government cabinet. This paper is divided into two parts. The purpose of the first part is to unravel how the narrative pairing resistance and representation was constructed by the opposition, demanding equitable political representation and stronger decision-making power over strategic issues. For that, I propose a historical-qualitative analysis of 31 public statements from 2006 to 2008 made by Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, allied with a review of the key moments of institutional crisis that led to the Doha Agreement. Results from the first part sustain the construction of a sui generis narrative that is both anti-sectarian as well as nurturing enhanced autonomy and empowerment for the disenfranchised Shia, especially by differentiating formal participation in the pre-2008 confessional framework from autonomous representation in post-2008 Doha. Regionally, this power rebalancing speaks to the rise of the so-called ‘axis of resistance’ or ‘Shi’a Crescent’. The second part of this paper investigates the opposition’s confrontation behaviour in the cabinet from 2008 to 2018. By tracking and analysing key moments of executive blockages and ministers’ resignations through domestic newspapers, backed up by elite interviews, I inquire about the nature of the veto, its extent, and under what contextual conditions it occurred. Results from the second part indicate that purposeful vetoes by the blocking opposition were thematic, demanded inter-sectarian alliances and were not as indiscriminate as the literature has previously supposed. The findings suggest that in confessional regimes of national coalition, veto-minorities are not necessarily only authoritarian. In practice, highly liberal and informal genres of veto are equally applied by the various religious communities as an instrument of representation, identity leverage, and protection of their vital interests.
Author: Natalia Nahas Calfat (Universidade de São Paulo)
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Roundtable / Teaching and Learning Post Conflict Afterlives Pandon Room
Feminist and other critical IR scholars have increasingly drawn attention to the complex lived, emotional and embodied experiences intrinsic to the politics of conflict and violence. In doing so, this scholarship pays attention to war’s entanglement in the everyday, to the lived experiences of those touched by war and to the ways in which these experiences exceed and complicate any linear understanding of life “post-conflict”. The roundtable aims to situate these insights in relation to conflict, teaching and the everyday. With this roundtable we seek to reflect on the everyday-ness of those who live in post-conflict, and how this can/should inform the teaching of political violence. We are interested in thinking about how affective politics must also be a part of understanding the complexities of outliving conflict and political violence. Our participants foreground different orientations to teaching and (un)learning conflict such as the ethics of comedy, laughter and love in navigating conflict afterlives, resisting conclusive answers and embracing disorientation, and the using of creative tools and feminist teaching principles to encourage reflection.
Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working GroupChair: Natalie Martin (University of Nottingham)Participants: Aishling McMorrow (University of Portsmouth ) , Maria-Adriana Deiana (Queen’s University Belfast) , Jamie Hagen (Queen's University Belfast ) , Philipp Schulz (University of Bremen) , Daniela Lai (London South Bank)
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Roundtable / 20 Years on and 10 Resolutions in: Wither Women, Peace and Security? Pandon Room
To date over 80 states have adopted National Action Plans (NAPs) on Women, Peace and Security since the Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 in 2000, in addition to regional organisations such as NATO, the AU, OSCE and the EU. The momentum at first glance seems unstoppable, yet this increased visibility leads to the question of whether the rhetoric lives up to the reality of action. There has also been significant pushback on gender equality and WPS at the national and international level, which makes progress made precarious and increasingly under threat. In addressing these issues, it is important to remember that UNSCR 1325 was a Resolution like no other, relying on advocacy from within civil society, the UN, states and from academics to realise its adoption. This roundtable reflects on where we are at and where WPS is going. We therefore bring together, scholars, practitioners, policy makers and civil society to interrogate the prospects for the next 20 years of WPS. The panel will consider: What should civil society’s role in relation to WPS be? What obligations do regional organisations have under WPS? What barriers remain to realising a gender just world and is WPS a solution? And finally, do we need more Resolutions?
Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working GroupChair: Katharine Wright (Newcastle University)Participants: Rachel Grimes (Independent) , Clare Hutchinson (NATO ) , Toni Haastrup (University of Stirling) , Hannah Bond (Gender Action for Peace and Security (GAPS)) , Laura Davis (European Peacebuilding Liaison Office) -
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Panel / BISA Professional Development III History RoomSponsor: BISAConvener: Kyle Grayson (BISA)Chair: Kyle Grayson (BISA)
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Panel / Conceptual Progress in International Environmental Politics Armstrong RoomSponsor: Environment Working GroupConvener: Duncan Weaver (Easton College)Chair: Hugh Dyer (University of Leeds)
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Oil has been a central concern of International Relations. The IR of oil has generally been approached and studied through the traditional tripartite theoretical frameworks - realist, liberal and critical.There has also tended to be a conflation of oil with broader energy security. This paper seeks to challenge these traditional approaches to the study of the IR of oil by taking more central focus on the materiality of oil and how its physical and technological manifestations create new ways of conceptualising the IR of oil. THis paper will draw from the theoretical insights of the 'material turn', drawing in particular from assemblage theory, as well as from post-humanism and complexity theory. The paper will also engage with the extensive research in political geography in the politics and spatiality of oil.
Author: Roland Dannreuther -
This paper explores the politics of reframing climate change as a problem of local governance and traces the ways in which this process has produced and legitimized new governance agents. The paper draws on a discourse analysis of the scientific reporting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a participant observation of the IPCC Climate Change and Cities Scientific Conference, an event held in Edmonton, Canada in March 2018 that aimed to set the future agenda for scientific research on local climate change. It argues that through its scientific reporting, the IPCC has, over time, contributed to reframing the climate as a distinctly local problem. More importantly, the paper argues that the problem as it is framed in IPCC reporting legitimises some actors and communities to act as governors of local climate change while implicitly delegitimising others. It further illustrates how, at the Climate Change and Cities Scientific Conference, practitioners and non-state actors advanced problem framings that reinforced their particular positions in the field of climate governance. Consequently, IPCC reporting and the results of the conference have reinforced the dominance of some governance actors and issue interpretations. Analytically, the paper contributes to existing debates on non-state actors in global climate governance, and highlights in a nuanced manner how particular non-state actors come to be perceived as more legitimate in a field of governance than others. Normatively, the paper highlights a key process through which particular actors come to define the problem of—and therefore solutions to—the climate emergency.
Author: Emma Lecavalier (University of Toronto) -
The current geological era of the Anthropocene has brought to light the profound impact of human activity on the natural environment. Establishing a meaningful engagement with this context of ecological instability involves highlighting the inadequacies of the existing concepts which define the relationship between humans and nature. This paper argues that the way in which the discipline of international relations conceptualizes the idea of space limits the possibilities of redefining the links between communities and their environment. Provided that the state is the highest form of spatial organization in international politics, the paper contends that problematizing its centrality to the discipline holds the potential to move closer to the above mentioned aim. It attempts to answer the following questions: (1) What are the ecological implications of the foundational assumptions of national security in international politics (2) Is there a contradiction between the notion of state capacity and the natural conditions which this capacity is based upon? (3) What are the alternative spatial configurations that counter the statist ordering of the political ecological space?
Author: Isha Sharma (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
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Panel / Contesting theoretical accounts: historiographies of emotions and IR Swan RoomSponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working GroupConvener: EPIR Working groupChair: Amanda Beattie (Aston University)
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In this paper, I argue that Hobbes and Thucydides are best understood as theorists of emotions in world politics, not realists. Taking my cue from revisionist interpretations of Hobbes and Thucydides, I defend my thesis by proposing that, for both Hobbes and Thucydides, the breakdown of moral language is the precondition for war. The open texture of language means that words like “justice” can be used by orators to advance unjust causes or narrow interests. Hobbes and Thucydides were consequently concerned with how orators could inflame the passions of the people by twisting the meaning of words, and how the abuse of moral language could divide people and incite them to war. I flesh out my account by examining Hobbes’s appraisal of Oliver Cromwell in “Behemoth” and Thucydides’ portrait of Alcibiades in “History of the Peloponnesian War”: two controversial military leaders who played important roles in rebuilding Hobbes’s England and Thucydides’ Athens from the ashes of war (when words had completely lost their moral meanings). My account complements—and problematizes—current IR research on emotions in world politics. Although IR scholars are paying increasing attention to the role of emotions in world politics, they have unfortunately paid little attention to Hobbes and Thucydides: two canonical thinkers who offer rich insights into the relationship between rhetoric, emotion, war and order. Addressing this gap will help us reappraise mainstream and revisionist interpretations of Hobbes and Thucydides as theorists of realism, fear and anarchy.
Author: Jimmy Lim (McGill University) -
Historiographical investigations are currently blossoming in International Relations. This interest in history is partly due to historical studies shifting their interest towards global/world history and global intellectual history. It is also partly due to International Relations becoming more interested in its own disciplinary history and aiming to further globalise the discipline. Particularly feminist, postcolonial, and (historical) sociological contributions have challenged conventional histories of international politics in recent years. In its wake, also the work and political activism of classical realists have been reassessed. This paper makes a contribution to these historiographical efforts, demonstrating that reconsidering the work of classical realists not only is of historical interest but their approach to international politics was also historically informed. Hence, classical realists aimed to historicise International Relations in order to gain a more comprehensive picture of the conditionality, contingency, and ephemerality of international politics. While variations of this claim have been made before, to date we only have a scattered understanding about the origins of this classical realist approach. While the influence of history, sociology, jurisprudence, and psychoanalysis has been recorded, the influence of art history on classical realism has received little consideration. To close this gap, this paper focuses on Hans Morgenthau, arguably the most well-known classical realist, and Heinrich Wölfflin, whose student Morgenthau was, to demonstrate that classical realism was informed by similar aspirations that still inform current International Relations discourses on aesthetics and emotions.
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Positioned within the study of the global, this paper pulls from a thesis that studies Buddhist feminist thought in the international. The thesis in doing so, also hopes to contribute to building the canon of non-Western feminist political thought but is primarily a project of privileging non-Western thinking and religious thought as alternative sites for the discussion of the global.
The proposed paper discusses the concept of liberation- seen not as one watershed moment but of ongoing confrontation and struggle- as understood in the Therigatha: the writings of the first Buddhist women. In the Therigatha, there are 15 stock phrases of freedom: desire, the ending of rebirth, the destruction of the yoke, the obtaining of knowledge, the destruction of obsession, painlessness, the tearing of darkness, the end of fear, peace, conquest, unburdening, and far shores. Some speak of abstract liberation, others of their own attainment, or of the mediation of an other. In the Therigatha the liberated continue to face conflict. Liberation is continued struggle, but what has changed is the response to struggle. Each of these phrases and understandings is tied to a releasing emotion, embedded in a context of conversion or confrontation. As such, in each ‘confessional’ piece we find a charting of the emotions of the struggle for political liberation. The essay proposes to discuss three distinct understandings: grief, euphoria, and wretchedness using three selected poems from the text. As such, the essay hopes to suggest Buddhist feminist thought as an important set of thinkers for IR, and to reflect also on how the emotions of the Therigatha impact gender activism, identity, vocation and purpose in contemporary Buddhist political thinking, in particular how inward grief and wretchedness has been poured out into a violent and inflamed Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar and Sri Lanka.
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Why do people hate the Berlin Wall and love the Great Wall of China? Both are tourist sites. But while people go to the Berlin Wall to lament division, they go to the Great Wall to celebrate Chinese culture, history, and power. And what does this tell us about our reaction to Trump’s Wall?
The research film ‘Great Walls: Journeys from Ideology to Experience’ (2019, 28 minutes) explores the ideological questions of what walls mean, and the affective intensities of how they can move and connect people. It juxtaposes our understanding of the (evil) Berlin Wall and the (good) Great Wall to reframe understandings of Trump’s Wall. It considers how texts (and textual analysis) are good for examining how border walls work as ideological sites for the Right and Left, while film are better at showing how people (both elites and the everyday) also experience walls as sites of joy, fear, anger, and fun. The film’s last two sequences – playing volleyball over the US-Mexico barrier, and fireworks art at the Great Wall – show how research films can address serious issues (i.e. the current migration crisis) through complex ideas (e.g. the sublime) in ways that engage the general public. The goal is to show the value of research that uses history, philosophy, and visual art to understand current social and political problems in new ways. The film targets academic and film festival audiences, and it is also made to engage with a secondary-school audience, and has been screened at schools in the UK.
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The political apology has become a key method by which states have come to acknowledge historical violence and political victimhood since the 1990s. The affective and gendering function of political apology has, however, been marginalised within scholarly literature on the topic. This paper connects the politics of recognition performed through state apology to the implicitly gendered and gendering operation of shame as a collective emotion. It therefore furthers the work of Ahmed (2004) by applying this framework to two official apologies delivered by the government of the Republic of Ireland to the victims of the Magdalene Laundries in 2013 and 2018, the second of which was embedded within a national service of commemoration and celebration. This paper makes an enquiry into the ethics and effects of invoking the victimhood of these ‘fallen women’ through a politics of national shame and argues that the apologies operate not only to re-make Irish national identity through notions of feminine purity (Fischer, 2016), but also to re-negotiate gender and victim subjectivities in relation to shame. Political apology as a mode of acknowledging and making others visible, this analysis suggests, has ambivalent effects upon those it addresses.
Author: Emma Dolan (University of Aberdeen)
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Roundtable / Curating and Re-Curating the American Wars in Vietnam and Iraq Council Chamber
This roundtable will be a discussion of Christine Sylvester's most recent book, Curating and Re-Curating the American Wars in Vietnam and Iraq (2019, Oxford University Press). The monograph explores how war memorials and museums, military cemeteries, and war novels and memoirs institutionalize narratives of national identity, as well as international power. It asks whose vantage points on war are made available at these sites of memory, and whose war experiences are minimized or ignored in ways that advantage contemporary militarism. Following one reviewer (J. Auchter),the book pushes the boundaries of war studies and is 'a masterful example of how narrative work can generate knowledge'. This roundtable will bring together scholars of war, militarism, and resistance to both honour the author's contribution to the field and discuss how the book re-energizes reflections on the role of sites of memory in normalizing and destabilizing of liberal militarism.
Sponsor: Interpretivism in International Relations Working GroupChair: Audrey Reeves (Virginia Tech)Participants: Katharine Millar (LSE) , Christine Sylvester (University of Connecticut) , Kimberly Hutchings (Queen Mary University London) , Audrey Reeves (Virginia Tech) , Cami Rowe (Lancaster University ) -
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Roundtable / Facing Human Interconnections 2020-2120 Sandhill Room
International Relations scholarship has been reflected on widely and deeply in the context of the (contested) 'centenary' of the field. Many shortcomings have been identified - from the lack of representation of many parts of the world to the lack of conceptual capacity in the field to grasp the complexity of the objects of study in this interdisciplinary field.
This roundtable features contributors to a project on the future of IR developed as part of centenary activities at the Aberystwyth University. The group represented here, and others, were asked to develop during 2019 contributions that reflect on some key empirical global challenges today (e.g. migration, climate, technological change, IoT, inequality) but to do so considering how such cross-disciplinary and complexly bound 'issues' can be thought through in the future of IR scholarship. The aim then has been to develop conceptual, methodological and political tools for rethinking the field as well as its empirical objects.
Key thematics that run through the contributions discussed within this group and to be discussed at this roundtable include reflections on: how to think on the future and multiple futurisms, the politics of the 'human' and the 'non-human', racism and decolonisation in the field, and future of governance in the field. The discussions at this proposed roundtable then contribute directly to the conference theme of the 2020 BISA conference.
This proposal is not directly bound to any one working group but can be considered to be relevant to many.
Sponsor: International Relations as a Social Science Working GroupChair: Milja Kurki (Aberystwyth University)Participants: Richard Beardsworth (University of Leeds) , Madeline Carr (UCL) , Vicki Squire (Warwick University) , Mustapha Kamal Pasha (Aberystwyth University) -
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Panel / Foreign Policy in a Populist Age Stephenson RoomSponsor: Foreign Policy Working GroupConvener: FPWG Working groupChair: Toby Greene (Queen Mary University of London)
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The apparent global rise of populism poses a challenge to International Relations Theory as populist concepts such as ‘the people’ do not readily fit into the established analytical categories and assumptions of mainstream theories. This paper discusses these challenges in relation to (neo)realism and proposes a re-conceptualization of (neo)realist theory as folk realism as theoretical framework to capture the main features of a populist foreign policy. It argues that folk realism constitutes a crude variant of realism which (1)foregrounds the notion of popular sovereignty, (2)seeks to appeal to the common-sense and fears of ‘ordinary’ people, (3)offers simple and swift solutions to international problems, and (4)propagates the deliberate transgression of the conventions of diplomacy and established tenets of a state’s foreign policy. The paper applies this theoretical framework to the case of the United States and examines the impact of populism on US foreign policy under Donald Trump as well as the broader implications of populism for foreign policy-making.
Author: Thorsten Wojczewski -
The present-day world is entering a new era of authoritarian populism with authoritarians and demagogues leading the countries that contain well over half of the worldwide population. There is also a concomitant rise in the process of border construction within the social space by virtue of an active construction and/or demonisation of enemies – both extra-territorial as well as within a territory. This process of inclusion and exclusion is being increasingly being faced by the disadvantaged groups of the society. This study examines this rise in the process of border construction inside the social space within the context of the rising authoritarian populism. By making the use of qualitative content analysis, this study argues that the construction of borders within the social space by demonisation of enemies is actively supported by the contemporary authoritarians for their personal political gains. The potentially dangerous consequences of border construction by the authoritarians indulgent in such a demonisation are presented as well.
Author: AKASH BHAGAT (Jawaharlal Nehru University) -
This paper explores Vote Leave’s use of one strand of Britain’s persistent Eurosceptic traditions – the discourse we now know as ‘Global Britain’. Now associated with an increasingly neoliberal escape from the EU, the discourse’s core themes of expansive free trade, foreign policy, and scientific innovation supported by institutional similarity stretch from the Victorian era, through the history of UK-EU relations to the present day. Implicitly entwined with the loss of British empire, the discourse is a prime candidate for the investigation of nostalgia, which has been overlooked in extant scholarship on the Eurosceptic Anglosphere. However, despite evidence to the contrary, senior Vote Leave interviewees rejected association with the imperial connotations of ‘Global Britain’ or nostalgic communication in general, insisting instead that the campaign was ‘forward-looking’. This paper investigates this puzzle as an opening for discussing the affective politics of continuity and ‘crisis’ in British Eurosceptic discourse.
The paper begins by historicising ‘Global Britain’ before discussing Vote Leave’s adaptation of the discourse and its relationship with nostalgia. Providing evidence that counters campaigners’ claims of distance from these themes, the paper illuminates Vote Leave’s use of a ‘mode’ of imperial and colonial nostalgia mobilised to preserve the campaign’s futuristic vision of post-Brexit Britain. This approach enabled the campaign to claim temporal superiority against a ‘crisis’-riven EU, and promote a distinctive version of British political economy. Yet though this post-Brexit vision rested on Vote Leave’s ostensibly avant-garde treatment of science and technology, additional empirical evidence suggests a further role for a ‘mood’ of nostalgia in underwriting these claims. The paper therefore concludes by highlighting the nostalgic underpinnings of the ‘scientific’ outlook of Vote Leave’s campaign director, Dominic Cummings, and extrapolating to broader questions of ‘crisis’ and affect in the Brexit debate.
Author: Francesca Melhuish (University of Warwick) -
Debates on the rise of populism and nationalism are abundant but the array of responses to those parties and movements have been much less explored. Why has no significant party declared itself as globalist? Who is defending the liberal world order and how? Why did some parties respond to the rise of nationalism with another definition of national identity (e.g. Macron’s patriotism) while others simply avoid the topic? The increasing presence of global problems and international institutions have triggered the politicization of globalization and supranational organizations which has important foreign policy implications. Much has been written on the ‘nationalist side’ but not on what opposes it. Is it cosmopolitanism, patriotism or Europeanism? Although the nationalist parties have been able to put forward a more or less common articulation of their project, there is a myriad of different articulations of party and movement’s position when criticizing nationalism. An exploration of the responses to nationalism is important because it is taken as a crucial (sometimes the crucial) aspect of the new cleavage between supporters and critics of globalization that, according to many (Kriesi et al., 2008; Zürn and De Wilde, 2016), is shaping voting behavior and today’s politics. I aim to study first, the increasing relevance of opposition to ‘nationalists’ as a political identity (for both parties and voters) and, second the many different ways in which this opposition is being articulated (some of them, paradoxically, well within the nationalist framework). For simplicity, I have termed this the ‘anti-nationalist vs nationalist’ divide within the new cleavage.
Thus, the research puzzle I will try to solve is why ‘anti-nationalist’ parties have not formed a relatively common articulation of their position while nationalist parties have? I will first engage in a systematic study of the different ways opposition to nationalist parties has been articulated in Spain by employing content analysis methods. Secondly, I will test the validity of hypothesis regarding institutional legacies, party family affiliation and authority transfer to explain variation across parties in Western democracies. My project focuses, therefore, on an important aspect of the increasing politicization of the new globalization cleavage that is challenging the world order.
Author: Javier Carbonell (University of Edinburgh) -
How do European populist radical right (EPRR) parties interpret and respond to foreign policy dilemmas? There is a growing demand for research into comparative populist foreign policy, as these parties increase in popularity, representation and influence. This paper provides comparative case studies of positions taken by Front National in France, AfD in Germany, and UKIP in Britain, on intervention in the Syrian civil war, using a structured qualitative analysis of public statements including parliamentary speeches. The first contribution is empirical: tracing what the representatives of these parties say about the issues, and using that data to make inferences about their wider foreign policy world views. The second contribution is comparative: looking across cases to consider the extent to which a coherent, common, global agenda emerges. This paper argues that intervention dilemmas do not only provide an opportunity for populists left and right to attack unpopular foreign policy commitments entered into by mainstream rivals. For the populist right, nativist and sovereignist principles feed a broader transnational world view that interprets global security and geopolitical challenges very differently from more centrist parties. In particular, the paper argues that EPRR policy positions can be explained in relation to sovereignism – the rejection of any foreign interference with the authority of the state; and civilizationism – a view of Europe as defined by a distinct ‘Judeo-Christian’ heritage that is threatened by Islam. These concepts are filtered in the case of each party through their specific national political culture and context, to shape their policy and rhetoric.
Author: Toby Greene (Queen Mary University of London)
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Roundtable / Law, Security and the State of Perpetual Emergency Parsons Room
Fundamental shifts in the powers of the state and the rights of populations have accelerated since the globalized response to 9/11. These shifts have created effects that spread beyond borders and operate in new yet under-conceptualized space. Although these changed practices were said to be in response to exceptional circumstances — the response to terrorism — they have become increasingly settled into an altered baseline norm. The participants in this roundtable will explore the inter\national implications of exceptional legal efforts to protect states’ domestic space in the realm of security. With diverse experiences from the legal, academic, and practitioner sectors, this roundtable will illustrate how the distinctions between international and domestic law are falling away in the realm of security and in particular in the responses to terrorism and will explore the implications of this dramatic shift in the normative order.
Sponsor: International Law and Politics Working GroupChair: Linda Bishai (George Washington University)Participants: Uzair Kayani (University of Lahore School of Management) , Norma Rossi (Royal Military Academy Sandhurst) , Andreas Behnke (University of Reading) , Brittany Benowitz (American Bar Association) , Virginia Anderson (American Bar Association) , Georgia Holmer (OSCE) , Pål Wrange (University of Stockholm) -
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Panel / Media, politics and influence of Russia and Eurasian states Martin Luther KingSponsor: Russian and Eurasian Security Working GroupConvener: RESG Working groupChair: Natasha Kuhrt (King's College London)
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The 21st-century has seen the emergence of an interconnected and multipolar world. Processes such as globalization complicate diplomatic crises and increase their frequency as regional conflicts have global ramifications and global events lead to regional confrontations. Amid this climate of perpetual and complex crises, diplomats will increasingly be called upon to practice crisis management. This study aimed to explore whether the recent adoption of social media by ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs) can inform strategies for the management of crises between states. The study postulated that during a crisis, MFAs will create frames through which digital publics can make sense of a crisis. The study further postulated that by evaluating the difference between two MFAs’ frames, or two MFAs’ interpretations of events, one can measure the scope of relative disagreement between two governments and the likelihood of crisis escalation. To test these hypotheses, the study built on the works of Erving Goffman and developed a 'frame distance' model that monitors the progression of a crisis in near-real time and identifies crisis pressure points at which diplomatic mediation may be most warranted or effective. The model was tested on a recent case study- the use of Twitter by the US State Department and the Russian MFA during the 2014 Crimean Crisis. An analysis of 1,000 tweets demonstrated that MFAs do in fact use Twitter to create real time frames through which a crisis may be understood. Moreover, the analysis demonstrated that by measuring the difference between two MFAs’ frames, one can identify crisis pressure points where diplomatic mediation may be most effective. Thus, the advent of online diplomacy enables diplomats to tailor diplomatic interventions to the unique offline progression of a given crisis, increasing the efficacy of diplomatic crisis management. Within the context of the Crimean Crisis, the study also identifies multiple instances in which third party diplomats may have been successful at resolving the Crisis by identifying areas of agreement between the Russian and US governments. The study’s qualitative analysis of MFAs’ tweets also identifies the core interests of both Russia and the US thus identifying a host of solutions that may have garnered support from both governments. As such, this study’s results sheds light on how future crises opposite Russia may be resolved through diplomatic action, as opposed to military force.
Author: Ilan Manor (The University of Oxford) -
International positioning through media: how RT defines and explains Russia’s role in world politics
As an international broadcaster RT (formerly Russia Today) does not normally cover events in Russia as a par of its international programme, instead focusing on the coverage of global news and local events in the countries where it broadcasts or runs a website in the countries’ languages (Europe, America, Middle East). However the positioning of Russia as a country can be observed in the coverage of other countries where Russia, Russian people and political actors participate in the narratives of international relations. This paper aims to discover what roles Russian actors play in these international news narratives, and how these roles correspond to the official Russian foreign policy agenda.
This interdisciplinary paper is employing journalism and media theory as well as theories in the spheres of sociology and international politics to explore the topic through both quantitative (content analysis) and qualitative (textual analysis and document analysis) methods. The paper is contributing to the existing lineup of studies focusing on identity in Russian public diplomacy (see Feklyunina 2008; Makinen 2016; Simons 2014, 2015; Saari 2014; Rawnsley 2015; Makinen 2016; Yablokov 2015) and international media (see Chatterje-Doody & Crilley 2019; Chatterje-Doody 2018; Pasitselska 2017; Horbyk 2015; Strukov 2014; Hutchings & Szostek 2015; Grincheva & Lu 2016) but is the first attempt at extensively analysing not only the Self as a group but the role that Russian media assign to Russia as an international relations actor in particular, this way arguing for wider inclusion and use of media and journalism theories in international studies.
This paper is a part of my PhD thesis at which I am now preparing to submit for examination at City, University of London.
Author: Aleksandra Raspopina (City, University of London) -
This presentation engages with the conference question about whether inquiry in international studies should be in conversation with other disciplines. Here, I advocate for engagement between the disciplines of international studies and anthropology. To validate this approach, I propose a study that engages with two questions: How is international communication of roads utilized and connected to identity formation and power transition in international affairs? Why do societies act upon road communications? This presentation engages with anthropological studies that assess the capacity of roads to enchant as regards to issues of speed, political integration and economic connectivity (Harvey, P. and H. Knox. 2012. “The Enchantments of Infrastructure.” Mobilities 7 (4): 521-536), media anthropology and the strategic narrative literature (Miskimmon, A., B. O’Loughlin, and L. Roselle. 2013. Strategic Narratives: Communication Power and the New World Order. New York: Routledge). The questions are examined using a case study of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which comprise of land and sea roads. Belt and Road videos on the YouTube channel of the China Global Television Network are selected for their reporting on Eurasian affairs. These videos are then assessed for their representation of local infrastructure experiences and the mediation of infrastructure visions to understand the interaction between infrastructure enchantment and strategic narratives of roads that communicate about China’s role in Eurasia and a Eurasian regional order. After presenting the findings, I reflect on the practice of interdisciplinary inquiry to develop different ways of knowing.
Author: Carolijn van Noort (University of the West of Scotland) -
The future of international studies depends upon taking seriously the interaction between media, meddling, and political processes. As one means for interrogating a state’s soft power initiatives, ‘strategic narratives’ have been theorized as ways in which political actors construct shared meanings of the past, present, and future of international politics to shape domestic and international actors’ behaviour, to pursue favourable long- and short-term goals (Miskimmon et al. 2013: 2,8). Russia’s international broadcaster, RT (formerly known as Russia Today), is often identified as a key player in Russia’s soft power strategies towards international audiences, which relies heavily on Russian political elites’ pronouncements. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the narratives that RT has produced around recent votes and elections domestically and internationally. In mediating the democratic process, and responding to, or pre-empting, allegations of Russian meddling in that process, how does RT represent the identities the key players and publics, the links between them, and the process of power transition? In what ways is a Russian perspective on these fundamental democratic turning points made relevant to, and resonant for, international audiences? The preliminary findings of the analysis indicate that RT’s coverage is built in populist terms around an ‘in-group’ of ordinary people, contrasted with morally dubious, but imprecisely defined, ‘elites’, situated within a fundamentally corrupt and flawed democratic process. Thus, without necessarily engaging in rational argumentation, RT’s strategic narratives nonetheless promote emotive scepticism both about the superiority of Western democratic institutions over their Russian counterparts, and about the plausibility of allegations levelled at the Russian state.
Author: Precious Chatterje-Doody (Open University)
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Panel / Poststructural Borders: Crossing the Line Daniel WoodSponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working GroupConveners: Patrick Hughes (Queen's University Belfast) , Ayushman Bhagat (Durham University) , Keysha Jaime Orona (Queen's University Belfast)Chair: Patrick Pinkerton (Queen Mary University of London)Discussant: Debbie Lisle (Queen's University Belfast)
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This paper sets out from the idea that the Good Friday Agreement created a unique form of sovereign and imaginary space in Northern Ireland at odds with a social order and recognisable borders based on territorial and identity integrity. This is a space marked by simultaneity: Northern Irish citizens could hold Irish or British citizenship (or both) and change these at will. By foregrounding a shared sense of EU-ness, particularly the principle of Freedom of Movement, the topography of Northern Ireland could be thought of as being simultaneously in the UK and Ireland, but always in the EU. The space and identities of Northern Ireland cannot be sorted into, or assimilated by, acceptable categories because they straddle (both/and) or fall outside the binary (neither/nor). NI is an unsortable category: it is queer. In this paper, I propose two things: (a) that the Good Friday Agreement produced a queer Northern Ireland; and (b) that Brexit tries to re-allocate NI into established sovereign categories, thus ridding it of its queerness. This paper grapples with the complexities of heteronormative bordering as Brexit unfolds and combines queer IR with new materialism to open a provocative new crack in the Anthropocentric cliff face to reveal the violence rendered possible by Brexit bordering. Like every heteronormative intervention, Brexit proposes that the movement of people, the management of its farm animals and the governance of the space can be straightened, if only sovereign binary logic can be applied.
Author: Patrick Hughes (Queen's University Belfast) -
Human Trafficking is one of the most politically charged categories of the 21st century. The dominant political narratives of trafficking demand protection of people on the move through strict border controls, freedom of ‘victims’ trapped in some exceptional labour relations through raid and rescue, and punishment of ‘traffickers’ through criminal justice responses. However, critical scholars consider these anti-trafficking interventions as ‘collateral damages’ and often demand for structural changes both in the immigration regimes and labour relations. Drawing on Participatory Action Research (and a multi-site border ethnography), in one of the most 'trafficking-prone’ regions of Nepal, I argue that these narratives produce and multiply contingent bordering practices for the people on the move. In this paper, I bring the scholarly debates on ‘Human trafficking’ into dialogue with the critical border studies to empirically examine diverse bordering practices, various mobility struggles and creative subversions. I argue that these subversions which highlight excess of mobility over control produced due to the irreconcilable conflicts between people on the move and the forces of control could effectively contribute to the ongoing conceptualisation of dynamic rescaling, respatialisation, and reconfiguration of borders. This challenges the existing conceptualisation of ‘Human Trafficking’ by highlighting a narrative based proliferation of non-exclusive bordering practices.
Author: Ayushman Bhagat (Durham University) -
The Climate Migration Nexus presents a phenomenon which is multifaceted, complex by nature which blurs the traditional classifications of migration. Those who face climate change and human mobility can observe conflated experiences, where disasters are exacerbated by socioeconomic and political factors, or where individuals actively choose to leave because conditions worsen .There is a divide in the literature in how researchers, policymakers and locals talk about climate change-induced migration and displacement. Specifically, there are inconsistencies in how to describe these affected populations as either being a ‘climate refugee,’ or the ‘climate migrant.’ Whereas concepts of refugee status are rejected by scholars, suggesting that it is widely inconsistent with migration in various regions and the local narratives of climate change. Which begs questions, of power and agency, and perhaps fear of a failing framework and the connotations the term ‘refugee’ entail. Despite this, research favouring the term migration still indicates a generalisation of experiences, often leaving out the perspectives of those most vulnerable and most affected.
This paper asserts how these distinctions in language, which seep into regional policies and international frameworks, are inherently tied to narratives; how there is a lack of empirical research which considers the narratives and perspectives of local affected populations directly, and how this serves to disconnect local perspectives and adaptive strategies to climate migration policy development. This paper will draw out the critical complexities of this phenomenon and the language surrounding the discourse, whilst advocating for more empirical research on local perspectives —engaging those on the frontline of climate change about the deterioration of their environment.
Author: Keysha Jaime Orona (Queen's University Belfast) -
This paper focuses on the growing use of biometrics for the identification of asylum seekers and migrants in the UK and The Netherlands. I will argue that the move from immobile to mobile scanners further entrenches discrimination and exclusion not only by preventing free movement of certain “undesirable” migrants, but also by isolating them within the spaces they live. Based on interviews with Dutch immigration authorities and secondary research on new handheld biometric technologies, I will look at how the materiality of fingerprint scanners directs the process of collecting biometric data and the strategies employed by immigration authorities. I argue that fingerprinting practices are actively involved in bordering practices when, for example, authorities sweep through a particular city to fingerprint and deport irregular migrants and “failed” asylum seekers, and when used in “stop and search” inspired strategies of the West Yorkshire Police. I will then argue that the different human and nonhuman entities of the biometric assemblage come together as a “virtual bordering” that counts as a form of exclusion and harm in that it a) prevents free movement of certain undesirable migrants compared to those privileged subjects carrying desirable passports who flow easily across borders; and b) isolates them within the cities, town, villages in which they live. Ultimately, the processes of identification constituting biometric technologies lead to exclusion and harm by separating out individuals from a wider community, denying them certain types of access and doing material damage to the migrants affected by this.
Author: Carys Coleman (University of Manchester)
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Panel / Re-imagining Nuclear History & Politics Dobson RoomSponsor: Global Nuclear Order Working GroupConvener: GNO Working groupChair: Hassan Elbahtimy (King's College London)
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Under what conditions do political leaders develop a demand for nuclear weapons programs? Hymans has shown that political leaders’ “oppositional nationalist” identity conceptions tend to cause states to strive for nuclear weapons, but the sources of such beliefs remain unclear. Horowitz and Fuhrmann (2015) have shown that leaders who have participated in an armed rebellion against the state are more likely to strive for nuclear weapons. But it is not clear if involvement in other forms of armed conflict can cause leaders to develop such nuclear preferences and the causal mechanisms are unspecified. This paper contributes by applying/modifying extant theory to new archival data on three Australian leaders’ nuclear preferences between 1969 and 1974. The paper develops the hypothesis that combat experience can, under some conditions, make future leaders more likely to develop preferences about alliances and/or nuclear weapons that make them favor a nuclear weapons program when in office. Building on literature that people tend to overlearn from personal experiences and underlearn from the historical record, the paper develops the hypotheses that people whose combat experience involves abandonment by or defeat despite an alliance will be more likely to develop nuclear weapons when in office.
Author: Michael Cohen (ANU) -
Pop culture, particularly fiction, is an important site where societal notions of common sense are expressed and reinforced, which is how films that depict nuclear weapon use contribute to narratives of nuclear security that are maintained by the continued existence of nuclear weapons and their inclusion in security policies world-wide. This relationship is both inherent and recreated by considering our interactions with images: even in films where their use is sometimes questioned, the use of nuclear weapons reinforces the idea that they perform a legitimized security function in the greater system of global politics.
This paper is a critical evaluation of my doctoral project, where my goal is not only to discuss the ‘image’ of agency, but how these images generate a capacity for agency. Popular films are capable of creating impactful change on public impressions and understandings of nuclear weapons, particularly because of the dearth of real world examples of their launch during conflict. In the absence of anything else, we default to imagination as a tool of justifying anticipatory politics such as security strategies and traditional IR theories. My research question asks: what narratives of decision-maker agency are shared through popular film and how do these ‘stories’ compare with, reify, reproduce and/or question the historical and political expectations regarding the control of, responsibility for, and accountability to nuclear weapons, in the American context? My design plan involves a mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative interpretivism of the existing social politics of nuclear weapons, in the ‘real world’, as they are expressed through a narrative historiography of the first decision-making space of the Manhattan Project combined with theoretical interpretations of the political problem of nuclear weapons in relation to decision-making. This will be combined with a detailed content analysis of popular films that depict nuclear weapons.
Using content analysis to review such ‘texts’ is a concrete way of looking at changes over time of ideas of danger and threat. My coding scheme focuses on characters responsible for nuclear launch decisions, allowing me to analyze the decision-space and isolate what is being conveyed to audiences as the most significant influences on launch decisions. Because my coding scheme was developed a priori, this paper presents a preliminary test against three films from my case selection: Thirteen Days (2000), The Dark Knight Rises (2013), and Independence Day (1996). Each represents a different categorical context: historical docudrama, inclusion of non-state actors, and presentation of non-traditional threats, respectively. In doing so, I review my coding scheme as it is put into practice to identify potential gaps, and test the connections between my quantitative analysis and qualitative interpretivism to strengthen my mixed-methods approach. I hypothesize that themes across the case selection will reveal various narrative tropes that influence real-world understandings of nuclear weapons ‘use’, including purported distinctions between heroes and villains, the influence of politics on military decision making and vice-versa, and how these stories define common sense in the nuclear age.
Author: Rebekah Pullen (McMaster University) -
If the Indian nuclear tests (1998) heralded the ‘Second Nuclear Age’, then the India-USA Nuclear Agreement (2008) marked the reorientation of the global nuclear order – these portended profound repercussions on international relations and epitomized the confluence of global and domestic factors. Nuclear issues are essentially entwined with the foreign policies of states, while the dynamics of globalization and power transition defies linear classifications between domestic and external processes. In the case of India, external factors provide a partial explanation for Indian nuclear behaviour. The paper examines the role of domestic politics in Indian nuclear policy through a Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) perspective; and argues that the matter is not whether domestic politics influence and nuclear (and foreign) policy, but rather how and when. Such an exercise, firstly, widens the conceptual and empirical template of FPA, which is circumscribed by Western moorings (in terms of assumptions and applications), secondly, connects domestic politics to the nuclear sphere, (an eminent domain of ‘high politics’) and finally, highlights foreign policy-making in India (an emerging power). Further, it illuminates the study of Indian foreign policy which remains understudied from an FPA prism and supplements topical scholarship pertaining to the intersection between foreign policy and domestic politics, which has often been driven by issues of economics and/or low politics. The paper leverages process tracing as an analytical tool and attempts to integrate insights from international relations, security studies, diplomatic history, and comparative politics to explain these episodic transformations; and thereby broaden and widen the understanding and scope of International Relations.
Author: Shounak Set (King's College London) -
This paper examines the political significance of the origin story of the US Manhattan Project and the first atomic bombs for the future of the global nuclear order. The article claims that, while there are multiple and global nuclear histories, one particular account of the development of the first nuclear weapons that the article labels as ‘the race for the Bomb’ has been repeatedly retold in western accounts, and its mythologised nuclear origin narrative articulates a particular nature and meaning for nuclear weapons that bounds our nuclear past, present and future and limits the potential to envision political change. It accomplishes this through Kenneth Burke’s concept of ‘entelechy’, which provides a means of examining how a thing’s essence can be understood by narrativising its past or future.
Author: Laura Considine (University of Leeds) -
The purpose of the paper is to examine how the decision of India to develop sea-based nuclear deterrence is determined by the nuclear strategies of its rival states. It also seeks to study the role of domestic elements and political contestations within the state that underlie the development of India’s nuclear triad and its sea-based nuclear deterrence in the second nuclear age, from the period of 1998 to 2016. With the adoption of the sea-based nuclear deterrence, India aimed to secure its second-strike capacity, which also provides credibility to its nuclear doctrine.
The paper would be divided into four sections. The first part would concentrate on explaining India’s decision to pursue the sea-based deterrence, and how it is less explained by the logic of the Cold War and more to do with role of distrust of the adversaries in the immediate nuclear neighbourhood. The second part would concentrate on the domestic elements which shaped India’s nuclear sea-deterrence capability. The third part analyses why the Indian nuclear doctrine has been modified to accommodate the Indian nuclear triad. Finally, the fourth part examines the modifications that have been made in the maritime doctrine of India from 1998 to 2009 in operational terms.Author: Shayesta Nishat Ahmed (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
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Panel / Security, Coloniality and the Policing of Mobility II: Borders, Violences and Contestations CarilolSponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working GroupConveners: Terri-Anne Teo (Nanyang Technological University) , Joe Turner (University of York)Chair: Joe Turner (University of York)
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In conflict zones, the home-outside binary is often washed away as violence enters people’s lives and personal spaces, diluting any distinction between combatants and non-combatants, even as International Humanitarian Law and Geneva Conventions highlight the distinction. In Kashmir, a popular armed rebellion against Indian State since 1989 has had the latter respond with brutal suppression. Making use of militarized masculinity to inflict violence on bodies and psyches of the people seen to be the ‘other’ has been a norm of State’s repressive measures. The frontier is no longer the border where skirmishes occasionally break out between Indian and Pakistani troops; it is not just the place where gunfights between militants and the Indian forces occur. The frontline is the home where women are subjected to harassment, physical and/or sexual violence; it is the check-post where they have to show their identity proofs; it is also the space and span of time when women gather to protest. The paper attempts to use the case of Kashmir conflict to highlight how women’s bodies have been turned into ‘ceremonial battlefields’ under militarized state control, which makes violence in everyday lives so normalized, especially the presence of male militaristic gaze in a place where seven lakh troops are stationed. In extending the understanding of frontline to homes, actions, bodies, and the everyday reality of life in conflict, the paper seeks to problematize the victimhood narrative by placing women as front-liners as they witness, survive, and resist.
Author: Ananya Sharma (ASHOKA UNIVERSITY) -
The central questions of this paper are: How do we understand how police and protesters are using surveillance technologies? Specifically, how do these actors navigate the controversies over race within surveillant assemblages? The following pages lay the theoretical groundwork for best exploring these questions. First, a critical analysis of the Foucauldian term dispositif opens up space to build upon surveillant assemblage theory regarding police-protestor contexts. I put forth three suggested developments that augment the concept in scope and depth, allowing us to intervene in and move beyond the Foucauldian short-comings. The first development will engage with Critical Race and Post-colonial authors whose work has intervened in Foucauldian Security Studies, ultimately applying their analyses to and outlining racialized dispositifs in police-protestor contexts. In the next development, the paper will outline the idea of ‘machine agency’ in these contexts, denoting the underexamined effects that the mechanisms of (counter-)surveillance (e.g. body-cams, camera-phones, drones) have on police-protestor interactions. The final development will explore notions of relationality along these aforementioned elements, in order to better understand the tensions that arise from antagonistic clashes between the two groups in visual veillant assemblages. The paper concludes with a contextualization of these theoretical interventions in relation to two pertinent case studies: Black Lives Matter and Stand with Standing Rock. With these three interventions and case-studies, the paper will produce a theoretical platform to investigate contemporary veillant assemblages around police and protester relations.
Author: Ciara McHugh (Queen's University Belfast) -
In the Pham Case in Court of Appeal [2018] EWCA Civ 2064, Arden, L.J, writes, “.. the appellant has over a significant period of time fundamentally and seriously broken the obligations which apply to him as a citizen and put at risk the lives of others whom the Crown is bound to protect. I do not consider that it would be sensibly argued that this is not a situation in which the state is justified in seeking to be relieved of any further obligation to protect the appellant.” This allegiance approach to citizenship is only applicable to naturalised citizens for national security. Thus modern British citizenship, which was first explained in statutory form in close connection with subjecthood in the British Nationality Act 1949, is categorical in nature and unequal in its operation. Similarly, even when it gave an illusion of formal equality, subjecthood tended to foster tremendous inequality both in England and overseas in the colonies and dominions. The paper will look at case law not just from the centre (metropole) of Empire (in England) but also from a variety of colonies and dominions (the so called periphery and semi-periphery). The central argument of this paper is that conceptually subjecthood continues in citizenship albeit operating in a different manner than in the past to aid in expulsion and shoring up of borders rather than in extending territory through expanding jurisdiction over the bodies of people.
Author: Devyani Prabhat (University of Bristol ) -
This paper explores the performance of multiple forms of violence against illegalised migrants on European borders as an every-day practice of coloniality. The argument draws on fieldwork conducted in Bihac, a Bosnian town close to the Croatian border, which recently became a crucial point of passage and immobilisation for illegalised migrants traveling on the Balkan route. Frontiers like Bihac resemble colonial spaces in reproducing relations of domination based on racialized standards. Violence is not only performed in the form of physical deportation. It exists in the IOM camp, which becomes a space of confinement. It exists in the cafés where illegalised migrants are not welcomed and in the supermarkets, that do not sell them food. The paper suggests that, with the mobilisation of bodies from the decolonised world, colonial violence is reorganised throughout the illegalisation and immobilisation of post-colonial migrants at the margins of Europe. As a result, European frontiers became uniquely interesting contexts where to observe coloniality performed. They are places where Europeans and their post-colonial others are forced to cohabit in the same space for an undetermined amount of time. Spaces where stratification of exclusion are manifest and explicit. Here, the colonial relation between oppressed and oppressors is re-polarised and re-created according to different mechanisms of discrimination. Looking at this context, this paper anticipates the theoretical framework of my PhD dissertation, and suggests a decolonial approach to frame where this violence is performed (frontier of immobility), in which modality (coloniality) and at whose expenses (illegalised migrants).
Author: Benedetta Zocchi (Queen Mary University of London) -
It is difficult to uncouple citizenship revocation from the security framing through which it is often presented. This practice has become synonymous with terror. While governments explain the stripping of citizenship by ramping up the security narrative, the academic debate largely focuses on how such a practice may be justified. Yet, in the immediacy of unfolding cases of revocation, there is a lack of critical engagement with the UK’s history and the imperial repertoire that allows for revocation to exist. In my research, I ask how the study of citizenship revocation may be informed by historical analysis of practises relating to Empire. Specifically, in this paper, I analyse the UK Immigration Acts of the 1960s and 1970s, Acts that rendered thousands of citizens de facto stateless. Using archival research, I examine government documents and parliamentary debates between 1960 – 1973 and I identify a new categorisation used informally by government officials in which they classified citizens as ‘belongers’ and ‘non-belongers’. These new terms, which never appeared in legislation, were presented in government documents and parliamentary debates as self-explanatory terms to distinguish between the tiers of citizenship, between those who apparently had a right to be in the UK and those who did not. Through this historical analysis, the paper looks beyond the security-driven narrative associated with revocation and asks how a citizen becomes a non-citizen or in this case a non-belonger.
Author: Deirdre Troy (Queen Mary University of London)
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Panel / State, gender, & materialism in international historical sociology Collingwood RoomSponsor: Historical Sociology and International Relations Working GroupConvener: HSIR Working groupChair: Clemens Hoffmann (University of Stirling)
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China, the commodity boom and the rise and fall of extractive post-neoliberalism in the global south
The importance of China as an investor, creditor and trade partner across the global south is now widely acknowledged. More recent work has begun to theorise the impacts of a rising China’s growing gravitational pull upon the structures and networks of the global political economy. This paper builds on these efforts by examining the consequences for national development arising from one of the most significant China-driven shifts in global processes of accumulation- the 2003-14 commodity boom. I argue that spiralling Chinese import demand in world markets for metals and energy commodities over this period was of sufficient scale that it (albeit temporarily) shifted the circumstances of insertion into the global economy for many southern natural resource-exporting states. In turn, this re-positioning opened up new spaces for these states to pursue their own nationally-defined development strategies- largely freed from the disciplinary constraints of International Financial Institutions, donors and capital markets- for the first time in a generation. Based on an analysis of 15 resource-exporters, I identify five ideal types of political-economic trajectory which emerged in response to these boom conditions. Three of these types constituted substantive breaks with liberal policy orthodoxy which would have been infeasible prior to the boom. For each resource-exporting state, whether such a break occurred- as well as its form and direction- depended primarily upon its domestic complex of state–society relations. With the end of the boom, space for policy heterodoxies has contracted and these experiments have met a variety of ends, while nevertheless leaving an indelible mark on each country’s political-economic landscape.
Author: Nicholas Jepson (Global Development Institute, University of Manchester) -
The 2004 Moudawana (Moroccan family code) is seen as a radical shift in the Moroccan’s state position towards gender relations. The Moudawana has given a new dimension to regulated gender structures within the private sphere; it made both spouses responsible within the family unit, has made male legal guardianship optional within the marital institution, and has given women the right to carry out divorce procedures. Whilst some argue that the Moudawana is part of ‘the political’ state logic of institutionalizing gendered structuralist modes of reasoning, thus bestowing ‘uneven and combined’ rights to different genders. Others consider the Moudawana as a non-implemented legal document having little effect on gender structures, thus exacerbating social inequalities, particularly in rural contexts. Additionally, socio-political debates around gender in the Maghreb are polarised between the question of laïcité and religion. These reductionist categories obscure the diversity of women and feminist trajectories in the region whilst at the same time externalising feminism, and by extension, other forms of resistance, from the realities of the Maghreb and the broader Muslim context. This debate is trapped in a dichotomous, unit-level analysis. It externalizes specific socio-economic and political contexts within which these developments have taken place, and views the Moudawana as a marker of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ Morocco and feminism. Intervening in this intensive debate and arguing against the historical uniqueness of the Moudawana, this article provides a counter-narrative to existing accounts of feminism in Morocco. Using a historical sociology framework to analyse the gender question, it reflects on the legacy of contention and revolution within Moroccan context. Investigating the linkages between gender, state and sovereignty in pre-modern pre-colonial and postcolonial Morocco, this article looks at the Moroccan struggle for gender equality not in terms in ‘discontinuities’ and ‘shifts’, but merely as transformations that are part of the wider modes of social reproduction. To do this, this article moves in three steps. Firstly, it discusses the premises and limitations of Realism in International Relations, as a theory which highlights state-centric conceptions of power and security, which not only obscure the gendered constellations of the international, but also conflate the development of the nation-state with the international system. Secondly, the article juxtaposes two gendered figures and moments in Maghrebi history: the pre-modern with Sayyida al-Hurra (1485-1561), thirty years’ governor of Tetouan and leader of the Barbary Corsairs in the western part of the Mediterranean, and the post-colonial with Saida Mnebhi (1952-1977), Professor of English, feminist and Marxist revolutionary who was imprisoned for her activism and died following a hunger strike. The article then contends that despite the temporal distance between these moments, and beyond their reading as gendered articulations of power dynamics, they are rooted within the contextual globality of empire and the social relations of capitalism. Thirdly, the article provides a theoretical framework building on the traditions of International Historical Sociology and Dialectical Orientalism, and argues that in opposition to the claims of the ‘gendered state logic’, gender is crystallised in dynamics between Moroccan state-formation, sovereign social relations, and the unsteady, ‘uneven’ nature of social reproduction, in face of the changing context of the international.
Author: Meriam Mabrouk (Birkbeck College, University of London) -
Why are there a number of oil-rich microstates, while those rich in other kinds of natural resources such as gold or coal are practically nonexistent? Scholars have discussed the implications of natural resources on territorial sovereignty by way of territorial disputes and secessionism, but they have largely overlooked the historical relationship between natural resources and the creation of new states.
My answer to the above question is that oil plays a unique role in decolonization. If oil was produced in a colonial area where the traditional ruler remained at the top of the political structure, the area achieved independence separately from neighboring regions, creating microstates, while other natural resources did not have the same function. Oil is unique because 1) it enriched producing areas more than any other resource because it was a highly valuable and portable resource that Europe did not produce during the colonial period, and 2) it only became valuable around the turn of the 20th century, when European powers had already colonized most non-European lands and made a political arrangement as to how to govern each colonial area. I substantiate these claims through comparative historical analyses of colonial areas across regions.Author: Naosuke Mukoyama (University of Oxford) -
National symbols such as flags, anthems play a huge role in contemporary politics in terms of shaping national identities and nationalism. However, national animals receive very little attention in the scholarship. This is counter-intuitive for two reasons. Firstly, national animals have a long historical root with human societies (totemism). Secondly, national animals are more proximate to humans compared to flags or anthems, which are in nature meaningless abstract imaginaries. This paper fills the gap in the literature, exploring the discrepancy between the theoretical advantages of the national animal as a national symbol, and its inadequate political salience in reality.
The paper proposes a theory arguing that national animals provide nationals not only a collective but substantial identity that could guide nationals’ thinking and behaviors. The theory has literature backup of Durkheim’s totem theory, arguing national animals are the modern version of the ancient totems. It then discusses the unique advantages of national animals from the perspective of political psychology. This section explains why and how national animals can provide a) substantial identity b) convincing self-perception and c) international realm, which distinguish it from other national symbols like national flags. Popular culture, as the crucial amplifier for the theoretical impact of national animals, is analyzed within the framework of banal nationalism. The second half of the paper explores the reasons for the inadequate political salience in reality. Weak presence of de facto national animals and lack of favourable situation are concluded as the fundamental and short-term factors respectively. Nationally representative surveys data and historical/contemporary case studies are used to support the claim.
This paper creates a new sub-branch in national identity and nationalism (and outreach to international relations). Besides, the very interdisciplinary nature of the research well demonstrates the modern research on nationalism from multifaceted perspectives.
Author: JINTAO ZHU (London School of Economics) -
This paper contributes to the study of intellectual history and to International Relations theory by studying the influence of Alexander-Helphand Parvus (Efendi) on theories of revolution. A theorist of the German Social Democratic Party, Parvus’s ideas influenced those of Leon Trotsky, concerning uneven and combined development (UCD), recently adopted by various scholars in International Relations. Parvus was, however, also a significant figure because of his embeddedness in the networks of the Committee of Union and Progress, which ruled the Ottoman Empire during its collapse. Studying the intellectual output of Parvus can firstly produce a clearer picture of the global influences and connections of the CUP, thereby allowing a broader picture of their intellectual context to be developed. Parvus’s thought also contained significant tensions as, even though he was a committed Marxist, until 1918 Parvus believed that warfare was the “engine” of history and therefore supported the Ottoman Empire despite its wartime atrocities. Significantly, Parvus was, earlier, opposed to the tendency amongst his comrades in the SPD, such as Rosa Luxemburg, to advance a universal concept of human rights, instead arguing for the historical primacy of conflict. This paper will also demonstrate how Parvus’s pioneering reflections on what would later become Trotsky’s theory of UCD were informed by his embeddedness in the Ottoman context. Specifically, Parvus argued that states and societies could be considered advanced in some areas, but not in others. Parvus advanced this view in response to the claim that the Ottoman Empire did not fulfill the standard of “civilisation”, meaning the conditions of being a “civilised” state. This idea later inspired Trotsky’s use of UCD to explain the Russian Revolution. This connection between the idea of UCD and the standard of “civilisation” draws attention to the influence of the global context of the early twentieth century on UCD.
Author: Marc Sinan Winrow (LSE)
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Panel / Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, and State Terrorism in the Global South Bewick RoomSponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working GroupConveners: Alice Martini , Tom Pettinger (University of Warwick) , Raquel de Silva (University of Birmingham)Chair: Raquel de Silva (University of Birmingham)Discussant: Alice Martini
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This study examines how Nigeria’s policymakers represent and construct Boko Haram terrorism, as insecurity, and how this enables certain state actions while excluding other possibilities. It identifies and critiques the contingent character of the discourses that constructs the Nigerian state as an object of, as well as a securitising subject. To be sure, existing scholarship on counter-terrorism in Nigeria have identified the excessive use of militaristic measures, instead of other development-oriented approaches, as essentially problematic. As such, this study builds on this existing literature to offer a broader examination of the warranting conditions and set of floating signifiers that makes such state practices possible, yet unnecessary.
This study is situated within constructivist and poststructuralist scholarship that treat (counter-)terrorism as, fundamentally, discursive construction. This analysis will be carried out by examining 20 official documents, 100 speeches, anti-terrorism legislations, and secondary texts that offers significant insights to the modes of subjectivity and contingencies that constitutes Nigeria’s counter-terrorism policy and practices. It makes a significant contribution by critiquing the various ways in which counter-terrorism is understood and practiced within specific contexts. It also allows for broader discussion on security knowledges and practices that go beyond emancipatory and normative injunctions.Author: Kodili Chukwuma (University of East Anglia ) -
Fatalist Attractions: A Critical Analysis of Scholarship on Women’s Involvement in the Islamic State
This paper critiques the perceptions of women’s involvement in the Islamic State (IS) in Western academic scholarship. Using discourse analysis on a sample of scholarship from both orthodox and critical terrorism studies research journals (2014-2019), this paper demonstrates that the portrayal of women in IS perpetuates narratives drawn from Orientalist and Islamophobic practices. These academic portrayals often depict the female IS participant as motivated solely by romantic interest and naively seduced by the promise of exotic adventure. We find that scholarship takes a paternalistic tone and offers a rebuke of women for what is seen as abandoning Western freedoms. The conclusions of this paper are twofold: critiquing the discourses of academic scholarship, but moreover examining their implications for national security policy regarding women’s involvement in IS.
Authors: Terrin Calder Rosen (University of Glasgow) , Christopher Mayhew (Goucher College)* -
Violent extremism is an ambiguous and politically loaded concept. At the national level, the parameters of what could be considered as violent extremism are usually framed by the state, powerful ruling elites and members of the international community through donor-funded projects. Although the Kenyan government labels groups such as the Mombasa Republican Council as an extremist group, the National Strategy on violent extremism is primarily focused on religiously inspired groups such as the Al-Shabaab, Al Muhajiroun and ‘Islamic State’.
Based on field research, in Nairobi and the Coast, this paper explores how violent extremism is conceptualized and experienced at a local level using sense-making as a tool of analysis. I argue that local construction of violent extremism is influenced by lived experiences and identity markers such as gender, ethnicity, social status and geographical location and include issues such as police brutality, gender based violence, and gang related violence. The narrow focus on Islamic extremism in Kenya has created a disconnect between government priorities and programmes and local needs. In order to effectively address violent extremism in Kenya there is a need for redefining violent extremism taking into consideration local perspectives and experiences of violence and insecurity.
Authors: Fathima Azmiya Badurdeen (Technical University of Mombasa) , Fathima Azmiya Fathima Azmiya Badurdeen (Technical University of Mombasa)* -
The new Brazilian Antiterrorism Act (No. 13,260/2016) appears in the context of manifestations and state violence between 2013 and 2015 and precedes the major sporting events of the period. By verifying the implementation of this act it leads us to a discussion about the relation between state of exception and sovereignty in the present time. It is proposed to demonstrate the end of the antagonism between Rule of Law and State of Exception, and to observe how the Antiterrorism Act would fit as a legal bubble capable of justifying exceptional measures within the democratic hegemony. This Act works as a new legal instrument functioning, as a device of exception, which legitimizes the engagement of the armed forces in public security.
For this purpose, this work establishes a theoretical framework through the paradigm of the S(s)tate of exception and resume a historical investigation of the concept of terrorism to understand how this phenomenon has a defining role for the orientation of political agendas. Also, this paper intends to recover a historical reconstruction of the identification of the figure of the internal enemy as an inherent logic for the formation process of the Brazilian state and the use of its Armed Forces. Finally, it is shown that legal uncertainty expressed through the use of vague expressions fulfills a function for state power, that is, the Brazilian State has the capacity to act freely and to frame, at its discretion, social and political manifestations as acts of terrorism and allows to perpetuate the military engagement in internal security and further broaden its scope.
Author: Vinícius Armele dos Santos Leal (PUC-Rio)
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Panel / Theoretical approaches to peace and conflict Katie AdieSponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working GroupConvener: Peacekeeping and peacebuilding Working group (BISA)Chair: C Cheng
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Where are Peace and Conflict Studies headed towards in ontological, epistemological and methodological terms? Should the field even be thought of as a single academic discipline or is this a misnomer that obscures deep contradictions? This paper explores these questions, drawing from a recent past of little more than 60 years, considering the present and attempting to rethink the future of those studying peace and conflict within International Relations. It argues that, when applying Robert Cox’s canonical distinction between critical theory and problem solving, a historical portrayal of Peace and Conflict Studies reveals more nuances and hesitations than one might expect, if we were to stick to the strong wording of their so-called founders in the late 1950s. The paper then delves into the symbolism and practicalities of separating Peace Studies, on the one hand, from Conflict Studies, on the other, and the critical and emancipatory promises entailed in such a dividing line.
Author: Teresa Almeida Cravo (FEUC-CES, University of Coimbra, Portugal) -
The concept of hybridity, developed by postcolonial scholarship, enjoys wide purchase in studies of contemporary peacebuilding. Hybridity is typically employed as an analytical tool to understand encounters between structures of global governance (and the agents of these structures), who carry out peacebuilding projects; and those subject to these forms of governance in post-conflict spaces. In this paper, I examine hybridity as a traveling theory, following Edward Said. Said argues that traveling theory can both nourish intellectual activity by moving past the constraints of the particular historical and social location to which a theory responds; at the same time as such travel risks a certain depoliticisation of ideas. In this paper, I provide an overview of the development of hybridity in postcolonial literature, and then review how this theory has been taken up to understand peacebuilding. I interrogate how hybridity travels, asking: What is lost in the travel? What new conceptual features emerge? I caution that the critical insights of hybridity risk being lost through a certain intellectual and political deracination of the concept in the peacebuilding literature, and argue for an attentiveness to the process of travel itself in deploying the analytical insights of postcolonial thought.
Author: Aiko Holvikivi (LSE) -
Recent literature on inter-organisational relations in peacekeeping has begun to gradually shift focus from the relationship between the UN and regional organisations, as governed under Chapter VIII of the UN Charter, onto the relations and partnerships between regional organisations as they have developed in the field of peacekeeping. This paper examines the conditions that enable regional organisations to cooperate effectively with one another in planning and implementing peacekeeping operations, taking the AU-EU cooperation on peacekeeping as a case study, and contrasting it with the absence of such cooperation in the context of regional conflicts in the post-Soviet region. Drawing upon English School theory that explains international cooperation in terms of institutions of international society, and reconceptualising peacekeeping as a contested ‘primary institution’ in contemporary international society, the paper argues that an effective inter-regional organisational cooperation in peacekeeping requires the existence of a shared understanding regarding (1) the means employed, (2) the goals pursued, and (3) the vision of a regional security culture that the regional organisations involved are seeking to promote and entrench in the region in question.
Author: Takamitsu Hadano (University of Tsukuba) -
This paper contends that Peace and Conflict Studies (usually seen as a sub-discipline of IR) has a significant bias towards the recent and the contemporary. This a-historicity means that significant evidence is overlooked in our analyses. The paper draws on a preliminary survey of contemporary Peace and Conflict Studies literature and makes the case that a significant evidential trail is lost by restricting many of our analyses to the post-Cold War era. The final section of the paper employs a particular genre of historical record (war memoirs and personal war diaries) to make the point that historical analyses and case studies offer much to the study of contemporary peace and conflict. As a result claims about the novelty of the current era are to be treated with circumspection.
Author: Roger Mac Ginty (Durham University) -
Planetary politics and International Interventions: Time, Scale and Peace in the Anthropocene
The politics of time are increasingly prominent in International Relations(IR), but remain underexamined in the area of international interventions, and the related fields of peacebuilding, conflict resolution and development. These interventions involve not only issues of time, but also a rupture of scale, in terms of the traditionally understood divisions in political science, between the “national” and the “international”. Temporal assumptions are intimately entangled with our understanding of different scales, with the “international” often associated with modernity, compared to the “national” or “local”, which are seen as “traditional” or “pre-modern”. This paper examines the temporal and scalar implications of the emergence of a new set of theoretical approaches around the Anthropocene, which pose a significant challenge contemporary approaches to international interventions. Prominent schools of thought like new materialism, posthumanism and complexity theory are united around the emergence of a new temporal epoch, the Anthropocene, and a new scalar level, the planetary, both of which radically disrupt how we understand international interventions. The planetary scale operates both “above” and “below” the international, cutting across traditional spatial logics, whilst the Anthropocene sets up a new, apocalyptic temporal schema, replacing ideas of modernity and progress. The paper will consider the implications of these new developments for the way International Relations understands peacebuilding and other interventions in the post-colonial world.Author: Farai Chipato (Queen Mary University of London)
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Coffee and Tea Room 30m
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Panel / Agency, silence and voice in feminist international politics research History RoomSponsor: Gendering International Relations Working GroupConveners: Aliya Khalid (University of Cambridge) , Georgina Holmes (University of Reading)Chair: Georgina Holmes (University of Reading)Discussant: Aliya Khalid (University of Cambridge)
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Against the backdrop of Europe’s refugee crisis, this paper draws attention to women forcibly displaced by conflict as emergent objects of European security policy, but also as security actors. We challenge dominant representations of these ‘subaltern’ women as passive or voiceless by showing that they shape security policy in two ways. First, their physical presence in Europe and at its borders, in a state of visible and tangible insecurity, troubles Europe’s sense of self as a global leader in the field of women’s rights. Second, supported by civil society organizations, displaced women have spoken at the highest levels of security policy-making to demand a better inclusion and protection of women displaced by conflict. These security performances (embodied and spoken) suggest that some subaltern women do speak security, although their audibility remains in question. In dialogue with Gayatri Spivak and Gloria Anzaldua, we explore this question through a content and discourse analysis of policy and activism on Women, Peace and Security at the United Nations and in European policy. The globalizing Women, Peace and Security framework has, since 2000, successfully constructed the conflict-affected woman as an active agent, thus opening space for women displaced by conflict to speak with authority in security forums. While these women have thus unsettled the logics of coloniality underlying European policy towards refugees, we find that European policy-makers’ responses to their security performances reinforce colonial logics.
Authors: Holvikivi Aiko (LSE) , Audrey Reeves (Virginia Tech) -
The silence explored in this paper emerges from a blank canvas that replaced a testimony panel at the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace in Tokyo. The testimony panel had been prepared for an exhibition of former ‘comfort women’s’ testimonies to their subjection to the ‘comfort station’ system, but was withdrawn by the survivor before the exhibition’s inauguration. While this withdrawal might be understood as evidence of the system’s continuously contested character as a hesitance among survivors to come forward to testify, it might also be understood as a foundational unsettling of the core dichotomies that sustain ‘comfort women’ discourse. Exploring themes of silence and speech; visible and invisible; and affirmation and negation, the paper understands the blank canvas as a site that not only unsettles binaries, but also scrutinizes the limitations of instrumental approaches to politics. The creative tensions that emerge in the museum visitor’s encounter with the blank canvas highlight the implications that the unsettling of core dichotomies produces as possibilities to relate to ‘comfort station’ history in the absence of stories to retell and images to mirror oneself in. Such yet unimagined relationalities unsettle binaries such as soldier and civilian; perpetrator and victim; and male and female and leave the visitor with only one possible mode of relating to this history: that of the human.
Author: Anna-Karin Eriksson (Linnaeus University) -
In dominant global conceptions of wartime sexual violence, male survivors – if attended to at all – have thus far almost exclusively been portrayed as passive, humiliated, and indefinitely stripped of their manhood. The existing yet limited body of literature on the topic falls into a tendency of representing male survivors as silenced victims resulting in a re-victimizing narrative of voiceless, isolated, and completely marginalized male survivors without any agency. The displacement from their gendered personhood that male survivors are subjected to is therefore largely seen to also deprive survivors of their agency as a quintessential masculine trait. Yet, in our research we find that despite their gendered harms, male sexual violence survivors across different contexts also actively engage with their vulnerabilities and exercise myriad forms of agency. Drawing on empirical evidence from the former Yugoslavia and Northern Uganda, we analyse the gendered and socio-political structures that shape their agency and influence how they navigate silence and voice. We illuminate different instances in which survivors employed different forms of ‘engaged silences’ in order to navigate disclosure and to exercise control over the spatio-temporal proliferation of their testimonies. By systematically analyzing silence as a specific form of male survivors’ agency, we offer a more holistic examination of the dynamics of wartime sexual violence, contributing both conceptually and empirically to research on local/civilian’s agency in wartime and on conflict-related sexual violence.
Authors: Philipp Schulz (University of Bremen) , Heleen Touquet (University of Antwerp) -
Through powerful analyses of local agency in on post-conflict gender dynamics, Feminist IR and Feminist Security Studies scholarship has put local experiences of insecurity on both research and political agendas in relation to United Nations peacekeeping and peacebuilding after the end of the Cold War. Connecting to this scholarship, this paper explores the different gendered strategies Palestinian and Bedouin women from various communities in the Gaza Strip employed in their different encounters with soldiers from the multi-national United Nations military forces in what became the UN’s first ‘mission area ’from 1957 to 1967. As the women dealt with their different situations through different verbal and non-verbal embodied (re)actions, the paper will connect how Parpart and Parashar (2019) and Hansen (2019) have conceptualized silence and voice as related but non-binary, grounded and contextualising ways of exploring gendered agency in insecure sites to the incident and interrogation reports from the United Nations archive that make up the empirical foundation of the paper. Connecting Feminist IR and Feminist Security Studies scholarship to peacekeeping history, the aim of the paper is to challenge how the hegemonic narratives of mainstream research have not only sustain the histories of the Cold War operations as non-gendered, uncontroversial and irrelevant, but also actively erases local agency in the negotiation of the international presence and related insecurities in everyday life.
Author: Martin Ottovay Jørgensen (Aalborg University) -
Attempts to transform patriarchal masculinities are well established in Fiji. From the United Nations to women’s groups and religious organisations, a wide range of actors have developed programs to engage men in gender equality or challenge men’s patriarchal practices. These programs have come to cover a wide range of topics, from sexual violence to substance abuse and housework. Despite this, programming remains silent on a range of notable subjects, in particular on militarism, ethnicity, sexuality and gender identity. This paper aims to explore how these actors involved in these programs navigate sensitive subjects through strategic silences. Drawing on interviews with pro-feminist men, women’s rights activists, religious organisations, LGBTQI+ groups and international development agencies the paper explores the politics of these silences. Attempting to move beyond silence as a simple signifier of oppression (Guillaume 2018; Parpart & Parashar 2019) the paper explores the political opportunities as well as the limitations that these strategic silences present.
Author: David Duriesmith (University of Queensland)
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Panel / Creating the State in South-East Europe: Sovereignty, Recognition, and (Il)legality? Katie AdieSponsor: South East Europe Working GroupConveners: George Kyris (University of Birmingham) , Lucas Knotter (University of Groningen)Chair: George Kyris (University of Birmingham)Discussant: Lucas Knotter (University of Groningen)
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This paper aims to provide a comparative analysis of Cypriot and Kosovar Albanian perspectives on Europe. Based on fieldwork in both of these contested states, the paper unravels the ways in which these polities’ citizens see their place in Europe, how they relate to the European Union, and whether they perceive the EU as supportive or obstructive of their endeavor towards full recognition. Furthermore, the paper places the contestation over these contested states in relation to the trajectory of EU accession for respectively Turkey and Serbia. In combining these to objectives, the paper strives to combine debates around European Integration with those of contested statehood.
Author: Başak Alpan (Middle Eastern Technical University) -
Over the last period, voices from within and outside Kosovo and Serbia have tentatively suggested that a territorial exchange between these two entities might be a possible solution to ongoing tensions in the region. Aside from supposedly assuaging ethnic tension in Kosovo and enhancing the potential for Kosovo’s full diplomatic recognition, this proposal seems to assume that the international legal (re)affirmation of the Kosovo-Serbia border would bolster Kosovo’s security as a state. This paper critically analyses this assumption by adopting Boaz Atzili’s (2012) claim that ‘border fixity’ (the normative prohibition on breaching de jure state territory) causes and preserves state weakness instead of stability. Maintaining that the ontology of Kosovo’s statehood is fundamentally premised on international political power rather than on international legal Opinion (2010), boundary-drawing, or recognition, this paper outlines how the (legally) ‘unfixed’ nature of the Kosovo-Serbia border has actually served to augment Kosovo’s state security. It finds that while international involvement in Kosovo has weakened local institutions, the lack of (international legal) ‘fixity’ of Kosovo’s territory has compelled this involvement to bolster Kosovo’s political security as a state. While this paper, thus, does not make any definitive claim about the legitimacy or viability of Kosovo’s statehood, it does draw a connection between contemporary norms about the fixity of state boundaries and the strengths and weaknesses of Kosovo’s statehood.
Author: Lucas Knotter (University of Groningen) -
This paper seeks to contribute to a largely state-centric literature on recognition by conceptualising the different ways in which international organisations are important for the recognition of independent statehood claims. I do so by surveying the responses of international organisations to state independence claims in the post-1945 environment in order to construct a descriptive typology of the different ways in which international organisations are important for recognition: recognition, titular recognition and non-recognition. I look at both successful attempts at state creation (recognised states) but also cases where independence was not recognised but a group persevered with statebuilding activities (unrecognised states), therefore forcing international organisations to contemplate a recognition stance. While the purpose of the typology is to conceptualise ideal types of stances of international organisations relevant to recognition rather than classify cases across different types, I draw on various examples throughout for illustration purposes. By doing so, the paper makes the following contributions to the literature: enable analysts to formulate new knowledge and organise information about state recognition and international organisations, b) contribute to a more theoretically-grounded discussion and the broader discussion by widening our understanding of the agents of state recognition to include international organisations and c) cross-fertilising the literatures on recognition and on unrecognised states, allow the discussion of recognition as a spectrum and explore the ways in which it is granted but also denied.
Author: George Kyris (University of Birmingham) -
The increasing attention on the study of violent non-state actors has forced us to re-think political authority as not only belonging to the state but also to other forms of actors. Especially, rather than a zero-sum game between state and non-state, questions of the construction of political authority call our attention to the relational production of both state and non-state. In turn, this requires us to re-think aspects of political authority, which are not necessarily state-centric or related to the traditional understanding of how political authority is constituted and established. This paper contributes to this debate, by looking at the role of silence in constructing claims to political authority. Silence has been traditionally viewed as the denial of authority, which needs to be acknowledged in order to exist. Both declarative and constitutive theories of state recognition rely on this very assumption of the link between authority and publicity. By contrast, in the analysis of the relationship between the Italian state and the Sicilian mafia, silence assumes the form of a denial of existence, which constitutes claims to an alternative form of political authority while simultaneously contesting state-modes of authority formation.
Author: Norma Rossi (Royal Military Academy Sandhurst)
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Panel / Dealing with Far-Right Extremism Swan RoomSponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working GroupConveners: Alice Martini , Tom Pettinger (University of Warwick) , Raquel de Silva (University of Birmingham)Chair: Harmonie Toros (University of Kent)Discussant: Chin-Kuei Tsui (Graduate Institute of International Politics, National Chung-Hsing University, Taiwan (R.O.C.))
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Recent high-profile attacks have drawn public attention to the rise of ‘far-right’ terrorism. This has led to an increased scholarly and policy attentiveness to the dangers posed by this form of political violence. Yet, as this article argues, it is not possible for the discipline of terrorism studies to merely integrate the far-right as another case study. Indeed, the challenge for the discipline is that the current moment reveals an uncomfortable and troubling silence concerning the importance of far-right, pro-state terror, and its absence from the histories we tell of contemporary terrorism. A survey of terrorism studies scholarship reveals that many of the core analytical frameworks mobilised by the discipline, and taught to students in specialist modules, have little to say about this form of violence. Developing a number of under-utilised empirical cases of far-right, pro-state terror, this article argues there is a pressing need to reconceptualise the histories we tell regarding the evolution and conceptualisations of contemporary terrorism. Attentiveness to the role that far-right, pro-state terrorism has played throughout modernity enables the article to challenge some of the assumptions contained within these pervasive frameworks, problematizing disciplinary binaries between non-state and state-terrorism, and historicisations of ‘old’ and ‘new’ terrorism.
Author: Thomas Martin (University of Sussex) -
Extremism has been widely examined as an empty signifier and a politically loaded category, usually associated to CT and CVE policies targeting specific groups and communities (Breen Smyth, 2013; Kundnani and Hayes, 2018). Nevertheless, the literature has not extensively addressed how these categories and policy programmes deal with far-right extremism.
Consequently, this paper examines the construction of “extremism” in Spain, where, in 2019, the right-wing political party VOX entered the political institutions. Despite its Islamophobic, xenophobic and Francoist glorification's discourse, the concept of 'extremist' has not been applied to this party, and this has not been framed within P/CVE programmes. There are, therefore, red lines for what can and cannot be said on ethnonationalist and religious terrorism, but these lines become blurred for the far-right discourses. Analyzing public controversies around “extremism”, this paper wants to explore the limits of the (un)acceptable, specifically in the routinized and normalized nature of far-right’s discourses. It will then build on Billig's notion of 'banal nationalism' (1995) to examine the lack of response and policy concern towards these discourses to show that “extremism” is what we make of it.Authors: Alice Martini (UAM Madrid) , Laura Fernández de Mosteyrín (UDIMA) -
At the end of the 20th century, extreme right violence was closely linked to the arrival in Portugal of the skinhead subculture, which joined the already existing nationalist organisation MAN (Movimento de Acção Nacional / Movement of National Action). At the beginning of the new millennium, the skinhead movement was strengthened by the creation of the PHS (Portugal Hammer Skin), which, for a brief period, appeared at the forefront of the nationalist. This paper examines how the violent actions carried out by these organisations (including murders, destruction of patrimony and numerous inter-ethnic assaults) were treated by the Portuguese judicial system and what lessons can be learned regarding broader efforts to counter extreme right violence. The MAN had to answer accusations related to their fascist ideology, which differed from the strategy to prosecute the PHS. In this case, the public prosecutor tried to demonstrate that this extreme right network constituted a structured racist organisation and that all the episodes of imputed criminality were part of an organic strategy of a racist nature. Thus, there were no accusations of being a fascist subversive organisation such as in the case of the MAN.
Author: Raquel de Silva (University of Birmingham) -
Recent years have seen an increase in right-wing extremism and violence in many different countries. From Anders Breivik in Norway to Brenton Tarrant in New Zealand, right-wing extremists have perpetrated horrible acts of violence, and more and more resources are dedicated to understand, manage and counter this security threat. To that end this paper utilises the author’s newly developed model of counterterrorism to closely analyse the key assumptions, basic principles, strategies and tactics, priorities, and evaluation measures that make up Norway’s approach to countering violent extremism. Norway is an interesting case due to its experience with a right-wing extremist attack in 2011, and since then the government has responded with a wide range of new laws and measures to prevent and counter terrorism more broadly. While other studies have looked Norway’s approach to counterterrorism, no study has to date examined the country’s approach to CVE. As such, this paper will contribute to the on-going debate on right-wing extremist violence by providing an empirical analysis of Norway’s approach to CVE.
Author: Sondre Lindahl (Østfold University College) -
Discussion about right-wing narratives and appeals to LGBTQ+ communities have been primarily related to ‘homonationalism’ (Puar 2007) and ‘Pinkwashing’. Further, traditional understandings of the relation between LGBTQ+ communities and the radical right repeatedly evidence discrimination and violence towards the former by the latter. However, changes within the LGBTQ+ community in Western nations is causing this to shift. This paper demonstrates how certain ideational aspects of radical right narratives are appealing to the LGBTQ+ community, particularly to cisgender white gay males. These narratives question traditional understandings of a ‘natural alliance’ between gay people and the left, who are accused of betraying gay people by purportedly enabling mass immigration of Muslims and ostensibly ‘promoting’ Islam which is, apparently, set on destroying the LGBTQ+ community. The radical right consequently positions itself as protecting gay people. This further coincides with changing gender politics among Western males (Blee 2012) and fractures within the LGBTQ+ community which the radical right exploits. We argue that this weaponisation of gay rights against Muslims is parallel to radical right appropriations of Jewish solidarity, Christianity, and some forms of feminism as a strategy to legitimise and ‘mainstream’ (Miller-Idriss 2017) radical right concepts into Western politics. We analyse official social media communications and the speeches of prominent figures in these movements at several UK rallies. We conclude that this is a phenomenon relatively early in development and must be watched by academics and policymakers.
Authors: Russell Foster (King's College London) , Xander Kirke (Glasgow Caledonian University)
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Panel / Diplomacy & imperialism in international historical sociology Bewick RoomSponsor: Historical Sociology and International Relations Working GroupConvener: HSIR Working groupChair: Brieg Powel (Exeter)
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This paper - based on a chapter of my forthcoming monograph - is a study of the practices of Dutch, French, and English consuls in the early modern Mediterranean. It illustrates key relations of jurisdictional collaboration and conflict between sovereigns, merchants, trading companies, and regional institutions. It discusses what was expected of consuls and the range of their jurisdictional functions, the policies and strategies developed, such as the restrictive regulations increasingly put in place for the French service and its unique model of salaried and commissioned consuls, as well as the different practices found in Christian and non-Christian parts of the Mediterranean. Through a selection of archive material regarding events in the French embassy in Constantinople from the 1660s to 1680s, the analysis reveals a more interdependent relation between ambassadors and consuls in shaping so-called extraterritorial and jurisdictional spaces. Incorporating these challenges - based on class differences or social origins - formulates new research questions regarding the role of consular diplomacy, its connection to the aristocratisation of ambassadorial diplomacy, and the development of different forms of early modern mercantilism. The analysis concludes that French consular practices are better categorised as transplants of authority, in contrast to the less jurisdictionally autonomous role of English and Dutch consular attempts to transport their sovereign’s authority.The paper also concludes with some of the broader implications for early modern international relations of the concept of jurisdictional accumulation for understanding imperial agency and the construction of modern international law.
Author: Maia Pal (Oxford Brookes University) -
The pursuit of Japan's soft power diplomacy in Southeast Asia holds unique changes during the past centuries after the end of World War II. Amid the shifting politics in the region, the term 'soft power' has started to become a crucial component of Japanese foreign policy. In a broader term, the research addresses a big-picture view of the shift in thinking toward the relations between Japan-Thailand that brought about by the changes in Japanese foreign policy and the possibilities for attaining soft power over the past two decades. The core argument of this study is thus to examines the growing presence of Japan on a bilateral scale, with a particular focus on the context of Thailand. It argues that during the last decades, various kind of skillfully crafted soft power has massively penetrated Thailand. Looking at the issue comparatively provides the interpretation of the action of Japan's soft power in Thailand. The increasing Japanese influence in Thailand is largely driven by the changes of geopolitical concerns, international structures and the tool used of soft power. The research reveals the complexities of interaction between Japan and Thailand beyond the usual state-level analyses and offers a valuable resource for the study of Japanese-Thai foreign policy relations. The research analyses by showing how principles of cultural diplomacy and how it has been refined because of its geopolitical given, foreign policy direction within the Japanese political structure. Subsequently, the research concludes that Thailand serves as a useful barometer of evolving Japanese soft power and influence in Southeast Asia. The result is a comprehensive discussion of current foreign policy and receptive to soft power as much as contributing to the debate on soft power balance and dynamics towards the transformation of influences.
Author: PREECHAYA PREECHAYA KITTIPAISALSILPA (International University of Japan) -
In recent years, a more detailed understanding was brought forward as to how the current society of sovereign states evolved. While early contributions assumed that international society originated in Europe and gradually spread globally since the nineteenth century, more recent scholarship highlighted tangled dynamics that helped often violently to globalise a European conception of international society. Particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century, these tangled, yet relatively loosely connected dynamics were replaced with concerted efforts to acquire imperial possessions. To add to these recent discussions, this paper shifts the perspective away from Europe and focuses on how the non-West engaged with this European conception of international society, arguing that it was not merely adoption but a creative adaptation to serve own political interests. To give evidence to this argument, this paper focuses on the Rokumeikan Era in Japan (1883-1887). While it has been previously established that Japan’s entry into the international society has been Janus-faced, meaning that Japan gained “civilised” status while at the same time it produced coercive policies towards “uncivilised” states, the performance of Western diplomatic practices also enabled a new Japanese elite to consolidate its rule and establish a new political Tenno-centred order. Through studying the Rokumeikan Era, IR can further recount the history of the expansion of a European conception of international society as a history of creative adaption that served other domestic and regional purposes.
Author: Felix Roesch (Coventry University) -
My paper addresses the historical, inter-societal roots of the emergence of Neo-Ottomanism; a project developed by the IR academic and the former Prime Minister of Turkey Ahmet Davutoglu and is adopted by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Turkey as the blueprint for Turkish foreign policy. Through this example, my paper tries to explore how the unevenness of the experiences of communities of their transition to the Westphalian order has led to the formation of competing yet co-constitutive desires out of which various post-nation-statist imaginaries have emerged.
A considerable part of the literature on neo-Ottomanism has understood it as a forward attempt for the neoliberalisation of Turkey or a backward move to Islamism manifested as a reaction to the EU's refusal to grant Turkey membership. Both accounts imply a unilinear and Eurocentric understanding of time and the transformation of the regional/international order that dismisses the inter-societal origins of the formation of desires that post-nation-statist imaginaries such as neo-Ottomanism try to fulfill.
Alternatively, my paper suggests that neo-Ottomanism is an international imaginary that tries to redefine the contours of the imagined community of Turkey based on a specific knowledge of the modern international system. Such knowledge has emerged from the inter-societal condition of the coexistence of the modern state of Turkey with both the former Ottoman communities and the rump states of other former Empires. This condition has resulted in an international imaginary based on an understanding of what Turkey has lost, lacks, and might lose or gain compared to both groups. I will explain the historical-subjective roots of this inter-societally formed knowledge of the modern international system and its implications for understanding the temporal trajectories of the transformation of international imaginaries.
Author: sara sara kermanian (University of Sussex, Department of International Relations)
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Roundtable / Discussing Doing Fieldwork In Areas of International Intervention: A Guide to Research in Violent and Closed Contexts (Bristol: Bristol University Press, forthcoming 2020), edited by Morten Bøås and Berit Bliesemann de Guevara Council Chamber
Using detailed insights from those with first-hand experience of conducting research in areas of international intervention and conflict, this handbook provides essential practical guidance for researchers and students embarking on fieldwork in violent, repressive and closed contexts. Contributors detail their own experiences from areas including the Congo, Sudan, Yemen, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Myanmar, inviting readers into their reflections on mistakes and hard-learned lessons. Divided into sections on issues of control and confusion, security and risk, distance and closeness, and sex and sensitivity, they look at how to negotiate complex grey areas and raise important questions that intervention researchers need to consider before, during and after their time on the ground. The roundtable involves editors and authors as well as specialists external to the book project. It will take the form of a frank and wide-ranging conversation about the practicalities, politics and ethics of fieldwork
Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working GroupChair: John Heathershaw (University of Exeter)Participants: Katarzyna Kaczmarska (University of Edinburgh) , Daniela Lai (London South Bank) , Katarina Kusic (Aberystwyth University) , Morten Bøås (NUPI) , Catherine Owen (University of Exeter) , Casey McNeill (Fordham University) -
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Panel / Ethics in Conflict Daniel WoodSponsor: Ethics and World Politics Working GroupConvener: EWPG Working groupChair: Cian O'Driscoll (University of Glasgow)Discussant: Cian O'Driscoll (University of Glasgow)
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What types of limited strikes are there and how are they justified? To answer these questions, this article explores two different types of limited strikes that are arguably to be considered force short of war. The “Hot Pursuit” narrative delineates the way in which states respond to terrorist attacks against non-state actors, combining both punitive and preventive arguments to justify striking targets within the borders of other states. Tracing the US response to attacks on its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (1998) to the Indian response to terrorists attacks by Jaish-e-Mohammed militants (2019) amidst emerging norms of drone use reveals how limited strikes went from a “do something” reaction to self-defense norm. The “Red Line” narrative articulates the manner in which states back foreign policy goals with the threat of limited force if other states do not comply. The inherent risk is twofold: on the one hand, the reputational costs of bluffing; on the other, the escalatory risk of carrying through with the threat. From the escalatory campaigns to enforce the no-fly zone in Iraq in the 1990s (Operation Northern Watch), to Western non-strikes and strikes in response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons, amidst open threats against Iran and North Korea, this narrative balances the weight of inaction versus the ethical dilemmas of over-action. Importantly, the perceived legitimacy of each narrative is intertwined with other narratives about the use and abuse of just war and the perceived failure of RtoP to respond to the challenges states face when combatting terrorist groups, as well as other states seeking or using weapons of mass destruction.
Author: Daniel Brunstetter (UC Irvine) -
Starting from the observation that the current wave of conflict prevention efforts rests on the belief that conflicts can indeed be averted, this paper examines the implicit imaginaries of world order in within prevention discourse. Drawing on archival sources, I trace how the notion of preventability points to a Kantian worldview, which understands the human condition as inherently pacifistic and conflicts as frictions in an otherwise functioning global order. An ontogenetic conception of war, in contrast, understands it as an intrinsic part of social and political life. Thus, war is not be averted, but to be harnessed for the creation of order and peace – a conception acquired verisimilitude until its abandonment in the middle of the 20th century. This paper discusses how the conceptions of war as both a destructive as well as a productive force exist within the notion of preventability and proposes a conceptual distinction between prevention as a question of possibility (war can be prevented) and as a question of morality (war should be prevented). Prevention as a question of possibility concerns knowledge production that aims at generating insights into the causes and dynamics of conflicts to anticipate them, exemplified by numerous early warning systems, forecasting models, and structural risk assessments conducted by international organisations, governments, and NGOs. On the other hand, the recurrence of ontogenetic war in the shape of humanitarian intervention and externally-driven state-building after the Cold War points to a selective notion of preventability, according to which prevention only applies to some types of conflict. That is, while the contemporary notion of preventability rests on the belief that all conflicts (in the abstract) can be prevented, it also implies that some are necessary to restore order. Consequently, the contemporary notion of prevention does not pertain to the entirety of wars and conflict, but to specific aspects like war's destructive outcomes, but not its effect of order-making.
Author: Johanna Rodehau-Noack (London School of Economics and Political Science) -
It is widely accepted that individuals and states have a right to resist unjust aggression, a right enshrined in international law and various moral and ethical frameworks. However the right to continued resistance during an occupation is not universally accepted. It may seem intuitive that ‘Just Warriors’ should be able to continue their struggle against ‘Unjust Aggressors’ but some Just War Theorists adopt a highly restrictive view on the legitimacy of armed resistance after a state surrenders.
For those who defend this possibility, one area of particular scrutiny is the question of who could be targeted by ‘Just Resistors’. Accepting a right to resist does not necessarily mean accepting a right to kill, there are non-lethal options for resistance. But should those approaches fail, who can be targeted? And what degrees of culpability must those targets display to be legitimately justified?
This paper reflects on the ethics of resistance, exploring the threats to two kinds of security forces: firstly, members of foreign occupying forces; secondly, members of indigenous forces aligned with them. In doing so the paper explores the arguments around who represent legitimate targets for justified resistance and what impact different degrees of culpability have on any targeting criteria.Author: Alex Crockett (Durham University) -
This paper seeks to contribute to the limited but growing literature on jus ex bello by focussing on one issue in particular: surrender. It will focus on works of regular war theory, orthodox just war theory and political realism due to their support of the independence between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, and the moral equality of combatants.
By examining the arguments of Emer de Vattel and Michael Walzer, it will argue that the principles expressed in their theories are congruent with and in fact require consideration of this question. It will do this by analysing the positions of each on how they relate to: state responsibilities, what they are and what their limits are; the conditions under which war should be limited; and their position on international law.
Using the positions of Morgenthau and Clausewitz, it will address two concerns that arise from arguing that states have a duty to surrender under certain circumstances, namely that, firstly, such an argument endorses appeasement and, secondly, that such surrender would in itself compromise national interest. It will conclude that surrender does not necessarily entail appeasement nor compromising national interest, and that the theories of Vattel and Walzer require consideration of the ethics of surrender.
Author: Henry Padden (Durham University) -
In the face of humanitarian crises, members of the international community are often presented with a choice: engage in forms of action, including military intervention, or stand by and watch. This framing ignores the ways in which members of the international community are already intervening, through their involvement in practices that contribute to the emergence and perpetuation of humanitarian crises. Despite calling for more attention to be paid to the ways in which the international community is already producing atrocity crimes, literature on the Responsibility to Protect has not adequately understood their implications for the legitimacy and likely effectiveness of military intervention. To redress this gap, we argue, first, that a focus on already existing intervention complicates the moral calculus on which defences of military intervention as part of the Responsibility to Protect are based. Second, we claim that actors already engaged in damaging practices of intervention are bad international citizens who are not fit for the purpose of humanitarian military intervention. Third, we argue that in both ignoring already existing intervention and calling for additional military intervention under its third pillar, the Responsibility to Protect legitimises a moralistic form of militarism. These three arguments show that it is a mistake to follow recent literature in responding to already existing intervention by simply adding to the Responsibility to Protect, for instance, duties to engage in structural prevention and to support refugees. Rather, what is needed is a more fundamental rethink that departs from the Responsibility to Protect.
Authors: Robin Dunford (University of Brighton) , Michael Neu (University of Brighton)
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Panel / Foreign Policy in and toward Asia Stephenson RoomSponsor: Foreign Policy Working GroupConvener: FPWG Working groupChair: Sarina Theys
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Whereas the Obama administration had equivocated, the Trump White House declared its vehement
opposition to the Belt & Road Initiative, a shift that went together with its designation of China as a
strategic competitor. The paper draws upon theoretical frameworks associated with the study of
American political development (APD) to argue that policy formation and development should be
understood through the lens of conflicting logics. If policy towards the BRI is considered there were
profound tensions between the Trump administration’s initial instincts that were structured around
bilateralism and a rejection of “soft power” and the foreign policy views long promulgated by the
foreign policy “establishment” which were rooted in adherence to at least some features of the
post-war international order. Once administration policy focused upon the BRI and competition
with China there was a shift in White House thinking towards an embrace of “soft power”,
infrastructural development and multilateralism through for example the BUILD Act. There were
parallel attempts develop a closer alignment with Japanese and Indian initiatives and develop
“connectivity” projects. Nonetheless, because there were clashes between policy logics, these
efforts were pursued but only episodically and they were hobbled by a lack of resources.Author: Edward Ashbee (Copenhagen Business School) -
If the Indian nuclear tests (1998) heralded the ‘Second Nuclear Age’, then the India-USA Nuclear Agreement (2008) marked the reorientation of the global nuclear order – these portended profound repercussions on international relations and epitomized the confluence of global and domestic factors. Nuclear issues are essentially entwined with the foreign policies of states, while the dynamics of globalization and power transition defies linear classifications between domestic and external processes. In the case of India, external factors provide a partial explanation for variations in Indian nuclear and foreign policy. The paper examines the role of domestic politics in Indian nuclear policy through a Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) perspective; and argues that the matter is not whether domestic politics influence foreign (and nuclear) policy, but rather how and when. Such an exercise, firstly, widens the conceptual and empirical template of FPA, which is circumscribed by Western moorings (in terms of assumptions and applications), secondly, connects domestic politics to the nuclear sphere, (an eminent domain of ‘high politics’) and finally, highlights foreign policy-making in India (an emerging power). Further, it illuminates the study of Indian foreign policy which remains understudied from an FPA prism and supplements topical scholarship pertaining to the intersection between foreign policy and domestic politics, which has often been driven by issues of economics and/or low politics. The paper leverages process tracing as an analytical tool and attempts to integrate insights from international relations, security studies, diplomatic history and comparative politics to explain these episodic transformations; and thereby broaden and widen the understanding of International Relations as a discipline and practise.
Author: Shounak Set (King's College London) -
Realists perceive China’s rise as a threat to the international order. Liberals see China’s increased participation in international organisations as examples of greater integration in the global order. Both sets of analyses frequently overlook the opinions of the Chinese public or conflate them with those of the state. In order to understand how the Chinese people, particularly those among the elite in society, perceive the international order we conducted a large-scale survey among China’s proto-elite youths concerning their views of the international order. Our findings suggest that the current dichotomy between realist and liberal scholars is too simplistic. The respondents to our survey demonstrated aspects of both positions – supporting cooperation with the neighbouring states yet, simultaneously, considering most of the same neighbours as threatening to Chinese interests. Given the increasing presence of Chinese people seeking to have an impact on the country’s foreign affairs and the way the Chinese state seems to episodically permit such societal voices to infuse foreign policy issues, we argue that a deeper analysis of this complex array of views is essential for a more complete understanding of the domestic context to China’s rise.
Authors: Nicholas Thomas (Department of Asian and International Studies, City University of Hong Kong) , Pang Qin (School of International Relations, Sun Yat-sen University, PRC)* -
This paper challenges the dominant notion in international politics that small states adopt similar security and foreign policies. We argue that variations exist between cases whereby small states have adopted dissimilar policies despite having similar geopolitical dispositions. Using Bhutan and Nepal as illustrative cases, we show how variation might look like. Nepal maintains close ties with both of its neighbors while Bhutan has a ‘special friendship’ with India and no official links with the People’s Republic of China. We explain this divergence through national role conceptions of Nepal and Bhutan, as espoused by role theory.
Authors: Sarina Theys (Newcastle University) , Bibek Chand (University of North Georgia)* -
This paper analyses the differing and diverging responses of the European Union (EU) and its member states to Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and demonstrates the challenges which contemporary Chinese foreign policy presents for EU foreign policy and cohesion. Its central puzzle addresses normative contestation in Sino-European discourse regarding the primary institutions of Sovereignty, International Law, and Market Economy. The paper deploys the toolset of the English School – international society and primary institutions – in its analysis of discourse and further draws on constructivist norm contestation theory. The findings show evidence for contestation and increasing tension in Sino-European discourse and relations since the beginning of Xi Jinping’s presidency. And further, that the BRI, while at first a projection screen for normative contestation, eventually became subject to contestation itself. Based on these findings, the paper advances three arguments. First, that found normative contestation is rooted in a clash between solidarist interpretations of primary institutions, on part of the EU and its member states, and pluralist interpretations on part of China. Second, that the variegated EU member-state responses vis-à-vis the BRI demonstrate the challenges which Xi Jinping’s initiative presents to EU unity and cohesion, especially in foreign policymaking. And third, that the findings do indeed point to Chinese statespersons contesting solidarist, Western-liberal interpretations of primary institutions in their exchanges with the EU and its member-states, i.e. resisting solidarisation. Moreover, that in contesting these interpretations, which ultimately stand for a Western-liberal order, China is proposing an alternative, pluralist order.
Author: Simon F Taeuber (University of St Andrews)
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Roundtable / Militarisation in the Sahel: old security practices in a new war theatre Martin Luther King
This roundtable brings together researchers carrying out work on security practices in the Sahel around two lines of discussion and enquiry. First, the researchers present some of their ongoing work into key trends in the Sahel: the growth of remote warfare, the militarisation of counter-terrorism, aggressive efforts to curb irregular migration towards Northern Africa and Europe, and the increasingly permanent footprint of international presence of foreign actors, devoid of an exit strategy. The participants then draw on these ongoing research observations to tackle the local political stakes of some of these trends, as well as the future prospects for the Sahel as a geopolitical entity and the paradoxical consequences that such transformative efforts may generate in the long term
Sponsor: Africa and International Studies Working GroupChair: Olayinka Ajala (University of York)Participants: Marie Sandnes (Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)) , Delina Goxho (Open Society Foundations & PAX Netherlands) , Inioluwa Dele-Adedeji (University of York) , Frowd Philippe (University of Ottawa) , Abigail Watson (Oxford Research Group) , James Rogers (Yale University) , Eva Magdalena Stambøl (Aalborg University Denmark) -
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Panel / Order, Agency & Complexity in Global Nuclear Politics Armstrong RoomSponsor: Global Nuclear Order Working GroupConvener: GNO Working groupChair: Laura Considine (University of Leeds)
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This paper outlines a research project in which I seek to demonstrate the interdependence of the ‘global’ and ‘local’ elements of world nuclear politics. These two artificial categories have tended to be approached under the banners of different disciplines, too often bring treated as analytically separate. While conceptual precision is required when discussing ‘global nuclear order’, I argue here that the narrow scholarly understanding of its components and the tendency to treat it as a purely ‘international’ phenomenon, in isolation from ostensibly ‘local’ nuclear politics and geographies, are unnecessary. Detailed investigations which substantially develop William Walker’s seminal expositions of the concept are remain surprisingly few in number, and fewer still take seriously the idea that domestic political and cultural factors might contribute to nuclear ordering. Meanwhile, outside of the disciplinary confines of International Relations (IR), a number of historians, anthropologists, and geographers have conducted excellent studies into what will be referred to here, in knowingly inadequate shorthand, as the ‘local’ manifestations of nuclear politics. These works draw conclusions which are of clear significance to international nuclear politics, and global nuclear ordering specifically.
Some have bridged this divide with innovative and exciting work, notably Gabrielle Hecht and Itty Abraham; however, efforts to connect it specifically to the concept of global nuclear order are regrettably scarce. Here, I aim to ‘internationalize’ these crucial insights into so-called local nuclear technopolitics, with particular reference to South Africa as a detailed case-study. First, while advocating the retention of ‘global nuclear order’ as a primary organizing concept, I caution against privileging a fictitious global ‘level of analysis’ over all else by recognizing that nuclear order is also contingent on—and indeed comprised of—political processes usually understood through a narrow ‘domestic’ lens. Second, I argue that domestic politics, even when apparently unrelated to nuclear issues, is very often conditioned by normative and structural elements of global nuclear order. This can result in hybrid configurations of nuclear order which can influence public life in unexpected ways. Developing our understandings of global nuclear order in this way might have far-ranging implications for the study of nuclear politics: perhaps most importantly encouraging a shift away from an analytical focus on great-power hegemony and towards a more critical standpoint which is receptive to the many ways in which smaller and/or non-nuclear weapons states (NNWS) have shaped—but also been shaped by—the collective project of global nuclear order.
Author: Tom Vaughan (Aberystywth University) -
In this paper, I aim to analyse the future of the global nuclear order from a symbolic framework. 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and questions regarding both its importance and its meaning arise. To this end, I propose a framework focusing the symbolism of nuclear weapons and the NPT in order to provide new analytical prism and new avenues to think about non-proliferation and disarmament. This paper is structured in four parts: firstly, I review the current theoretical explanatory models of nuclear behaviour and their accounts of the NPT. Secondly, I present a theoretical model focusing on the symbolic perceptions of nuclear weapons and see symbolism – and its construction – as a driver for behaviour. Thirdly, I put forward the argument that nuclear behaviour is subject to the intersubjective semiotic processes determining the symbolic perceptions of nuclear weapons, and that further understanding this variable is crucial to shaping the future of the global nuclear order. Lastly, based on the symbolic framework, I analyse the NPT as a symbol and its role in the future of the global nuclear order.
Author: Orion Noda (King's College London) -
Recent work has examined the concept of a 'global nuclear order' through a critical lens that takes power and hegemony seriously, drawing in part on the negotiation of the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This paper takes the analysis of a 'global nuclear control order' (Ritchie, 2019) further by examining changes in the core formal and informal institutions of nuclear order over the past 25 years. The period is relevant because it marks the period from the permanent extension of the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 1995 to the 50th anniversary of its entry into force in May 2020 as one of the core institutions of nuclear order. This has also period been of considerable flux in US hegemonic power from the highs of unipolarity in the mid-1990s to the transactional primacy and burgeoning multipolarity of today. Yet the nuclear order as a hegemonic structure of power with the US at its heart has proved remarkably resilient. The research will better explain what nuclear order is and the relationship between US power, the changing distribution of power in global politics, and nuclear order as a hegemonic structure of power.
Author: Nick Ritchie (University of York) -
The Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is widely referred to as a global regime embodying near universal ‘norms’. Yet, the history of the origins and the evolution of the regime are frequently framed as a function of superpower relations. The voices of neutral as well as non-nuclear states are consequently edited out despite their central role in giving the regime its global character and outlook. This paper engages with prevailing narratives about the origins of the treaty and the assumptions they embody about agency in international relations. Through tracing the role of Egypt in the negotiations of the Treaty, the paper points to the multiple influences that shaped that landmark treaty as an idea, draft then as a final adopted text. A broader conception of normative agency, drawn from the negotiating record of the treaty, opens up questions for responsibility and accountability of a wider set of actors in shaping the current institutions underpinning the global nuclear order.
Author: Hassan Elbahtimy (King's College London) -
One of the most pervasive approaches to impede the spread of nuclear weapons has been the establishment of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The peculiarity of this regime is that it has not been based on a manageable number of clearly defined agreements and institutions as in the case of other issue areas. It has rather grown into an intricate maze of dozens of international treaties, intergovernmental organisations, conventions, protocols and informal institutions with overlapping membership and mandates. Surprisingly, the existing literature on nuclear non-proliferation has rarely made an effort to understand the potential ramifications of the complexity of this regime. By making use of the emerging concept of ‘regime complexity’ in International Relations, this paper attempts to close this gap in the literature. It asks specifically to what extent the existence of an increasingly dense network of interlinked and overlapping non-proliferation institutions and agreements has enabling or constraining effects on international efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. To this end, the paper examines, on the one hand, how the existence of a complex regime might have strengthened nuclear non-proliferation by specifying, for instance, relevant regime provisions and closing loopholes; on the other hand, the paper analyses how regime complexity may have had the opposite effect due to the inherent competition and contradictions between different regime elements. The paper concludes that regime complexity does strengthen non-proliferation on the whole, but that it has also created functional frictions that may have undermined specific non-proliferation efforts.
Author: Ben Kienzle -
The most significant aspect of the future of international studies lies in the generation of acceptable definitions, rules and agreements. In this new age of ever-increasing wave of globalization, explicit understanding of global governance has become a necessity. Therefore central puzzle that this paper investigates is that how the lack of generation of essential attributes like accurate definitions, rules and agreements by the field of international studies makes multiple complex layers of engagement in global governance chaotic, anarchic, less effective and sometimes complete failure.
This study furthermore argues that instead of so many complex, incompatible and fragmented definitions there needs to be a clear and acceptable single understanding of concepts. Thus, this paper specifically focuses on the process of generation of definitions, acceptance among members and thus defining the success of the ideological underpinnings set and spread by the field of international studies.
To demonstrate the complexities involved in this process of development of successful conceptual understanding, mutually agreeable definitions, rules and agreements, this study has taken the particular case study of current global nuclear governance which is a multilayer involvement of different nations through different modes like treaties, agreements, initiatives etc. This multilateral unbinding chaotic arrangement has failed in prohibiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The loopholes in these multiple layers of agreements have made the world unsafe. With the acquisition of nuclear weapons by small states and fear of theft of nuclear weapons by terrorist organizations and the threat of coercive nuclear escalation in a conventional conflict, it has become mandatory for the field of international studies to define precisely the model and definition of cooperation among nations so that amongst the vicious chaos of multi-layered agreements the original commitment does not die. Therefore, in this age of globalization field of international studies needs an overhaul.
Author: Silky Kaur (JNU)
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Roundtable / Permissive Violence: The Legality and Legitimacy of Armed Drone Use Dobson Room
In the age of the drone, the presentation of the use of force is of a sanitized, surgical, precision instrument which targets the malign tissue, without damaging the wider body politic. What is seen as a virtue by policy-makers is viewed elsewhere as a transgression of the legal boundaries surrounding when it is permissible for the state to kill. Instead, critics argue it is a form of execution that breaks existing international law despite attempts by governments to justify such uses of force in legal terms. Taking armed drone use as a site of enquiry, this roundtable proposes to interrogate the constitutive relationship between international law regulating the use of force and politics. Its discussion will be guided by an Open Society Foundation funded book project that we are working on at the Institute for Conflict, Cooperation and Security, to be published in 2020. The book argues that the legal framework regulating all uses of force is sufficiently flexible in interpretation that decision-makers can justify military actions as lawful that previously would have been considered breaches of the law. In making this argument the book conceptualises an understanding of international law as a framework that is intensely political, and seeks to understand international law as both enabling and constraining of state actions. At a time when international law faces significant challenges, this roundtable reflects on how states seek to reinterpret it and set new precedents and how the law may be used to justify – or condemn – states’ use of force.
Sponsor: International Law and Politics Working GroupChair: David H. Dunn (Birmingham)Participants: Zeenat Sabur , David H Dunn (BISA member) , Nick Wheeler (Birmingham) , Caroline Kennedy-Pipe (Loughborough University) , Maja Zehfuss (The University of Manchester) -
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Panel / Perspectives on and challenges to regionalism Collingwood RoomSponsor: International Political Economy Working GroupConvener: IPEG Working groupChair: Sophia Price (Leeds Beckett University)Discussant: John Morris (University of Warwick)
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This paper seeks to contribute to the English School’s (ES) understanding of the European Regional International Society (ERIS) through a critical political economy lens. With specific focus on sugar, the paper aims to address a puzzle at the heart of the European sugar complex. Contributing only a fraction of regional GDP, and dwindling employment shares, the inefficient (and protected) production of European beet sugar (compared to cane sugar) incurs enormous costs to consumers in the North and producers in the South. Vigorously contested by other states through the WTO, ERIS’ sugar industry eventually underwent liberalisation, seemingly solving the paradox of the global sugar regime. Yet European capitals continue to prosper while developing countries fall behind. This contradictory story of sugar aims to provide a much needed political economy approach to the ES tradition. Revealing the hidden foundations of production and power within and between international societies at a variety of scales (regional/global) allows for a more sociological understanding of how specific actors shape primary institutions, contest the norms of free trade, and seek to maintain (or alter) the global hierarchy of wealth that has underpinned the evolution of modern international society from its inception.
Authors: Rowan Lubbock (Queen Mary, University of London) , Kieran Andrieu (Birkbeck, University of London)* -
Although the concept of ‘parliamentary sovereignty’ has been at the heart of Eurosceptic discourse over the past decades, one consequence of Brexit has been the concentration of power in the hands of the UK Executive as a result of the UK’s Constitutional arrangements. This has led to Executive-Legislative tussles not just on the substantive direction of Brexit, notably on whether the UK should remain closely aligned to the EU’s customs and regulatory regime, but on the role of the UK Parliament in approving an EU exit deal. However, the tension between the discourse of ‘parliamentary sovereignty’ and the politically mediated Constitutional effects of Brexit is unlikely to disappear with the UK’s exit in January 2020. Focusing on trade policy – a new competence being repatriated that has been at the heart of post-referendum Governments’ post-Brexit strategies – this paper provides an overview of how developments under the May administration have largely entrenched the Constitutional status quo. The power of Royal Prerogative and the limitations of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act (CRaG) continue to severely constrain the power of the legislature when it comes to the ratification of trade-related treaties. Although this has so far only lead to some muted criticisms from stakeholders and parliamentarians, it is likely to face much fiercer criticism when the UK starts exercising an independent trade policy in earnest.
Author: Gabriel Siles-Brügge (University of Warwick) -
The 2008 global financial crisis generated a number of marked geo-political and economic shifts within global capitalism. In the aftermath of the crash, international capital flows, trade and investment collapsed and have yet to recover to their pre-crisis levels. Beijing is now increasingly projecting its geo-political and economic power onto the world stage. While the United States played a critical role in stabilising global capitalism in the wake of the crisis, there are signs that its leadership role is diminishing, as the Trump presidency withdraws from multi-lateral agreements and embraces a protectionist trade policy. Together, these shifts are reflective of an emerging reconfiguration in global capitalism – what we term the new post-crisis ‘global disorder’. The question we seek to answer in this paper is how might we theorise the relation between these reconfigurations in global capitalism and the future of European integration? To answer this, we identify four key shifts in the post-crisis global conjuncture which break with the prevailing consensus on world politics in which the field of EU studies was formed. These are the fracturing of US hegemony; the deglobalisation of the world economy; the politicisation of international monetary policy; and the rise of populism and novel forms of democratic politics. We then argue that each of these transformations presents a new set of challenges for European integration, presenting themselves as a tension between the pressure for alignment with the new realities of global capitalism and the search for a position of relative autonomy within it.
Authors: Davide Schmid (Manchester Metropolitan University) , Scott Lavery (University of Sheffield)* -
This paper seeks to contribute to the field of regional environmental governance by advancing our understanding of the relationship between the governance of transboundary natural resources and regionalism. Theoretically, it is based on the New Regionalism Approach which regards regions as socially constructed through dynamic and multidimensional processes involving a wide range of actors and interactions on a variety of issues. Through this lens the paper examines the puzzling case of the pulp mill conflict which escalated between Argentina and Uruguay during the 2000s when the outlook for regionalism was in many ways favorable. Based on interviews with 24 key informants from civil society organizations and regional institutions, participant observation, and civil society reports the paper traces how the conflict evolved from a shared environmental concern to a national cause. Situating the analysis of the conflict in the wider context of regionalism and natural resource governance in South America drawing on Latin American studies and transboundary water governance leads to two key findings which are important for strengthening the research agendas of regional environmental governance and comparative regionalism. First, natural resource governance is an important, but often overlooked arena of regionalization which may help to account for variations in regionalism in the world. Second, it is also highly contested and sustainability concerns are at the core of these contestations. Diverging priorities over natural resource governance between governments and civil society can be an important obstacle to regional cohesion.
Author: Karen Siegel (University of Glasgow)
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Panel / Power, Populism and Popular Culture CarilolSponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working GroupConvener: PPWG Working groupChair: Martin Coward (University of Manchester)
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Populism has received significant attention in current political and social science debates. Accompanying this attention, a controversial debate on the relevance of populism to IR has emerged (e.g. Taggart 2000; Mudde 2004; Laclau 2005). However, there exist a lack of IR studies which systematically examine populism at the inter- and transnational level. Ernesto Laclau’s work “On Populist Reason” provides a possible conceptualization of populism suitable for such an analysis on a global level. Laclau understands populism as discursive strategy of constructing a political frontier to enable the mobilization of the ‘underdog’ against ‘those in power’ (Laclau 2005). In the proposed paper, Laclau’s perspective on populism is adopted to develop a narrative of the “Fridays for Future” movement. By doing so, this paper shows how Laclau’s concept of populism may be used to make sense of populist movements at a global level and thus evaluates its relevance to IR.
Author: Caroline Caroline Maria Kalkreuth (Kiel University) -
The ongoing climate crisis represents one of the most pressing and challenging threats to global security. While much scholarship is – rightly – focused on the science of climatology, environmental security, and the policy of prevention and management there has been much less on how cultural media represent, create, and circulate particular meanings of the Anthropocene. This paper starts with the argument that popular culture generally, and Hollywood movies specifically, contribute to the creation and circulation of meanings regarding climate change and its possible solutions through the inducement of highly intensive, embodied, and affective encounters between screen and audience. The emerging sub-genre of cli-fi (climate-fiction) will be interrogated through movies such as The Day After Tomorrow (2004), Snowpiercer (2013), and Geostorm (2017) to ascertain what role popular culture plays within the creation and circulation of the meanings, causes, and solutions to climate change. It will be argued that these movies represent two possible outcomes to ongoing anthropogenic climate change – disaster or technological salvation – and by so doing, close off the potential to engage with the possibility of the radical social, political, and economic change that is necessary to halt the effects of a changing climate.
Author: Cahir O'Doherty (Swansea University) -
Sparked by recent political events and a sharp increase in the academic production on the theme, a novel literature on populism is emerging within International Relations. Besides failing to engage critically with, and build on, extant accounts of populism in germane disciplines, this new scholarship fundamentally lacks an adequate overarching theoretical framework capable of guiding empirical research. After discussing and identifying Ernesto Laclau’s theoretical framework as the best suited alternative to come to grips with the phenomenon under analysis, this paper embarks upon a critical investigation of it. In particular, it argues that the Laclauian framework falls short of properly theorising affect and temporality within populist politics. The paper hence draws together insights from the “affective” and “temporal turns” in IR with the aim of bolstering the formulation of a more nuanced and analytically powerful theory of populism. First, it advances (a) a theorisation of affect as economic and (b) an analytical overture towards identity discourses and narratives that are able to complement Laclau’s account of the ‘form’ of affect, with one of its ‘force’. Second, the paper turns to ‘timing theory’ and its relational ontology to compensate for Laclau’s lack of engagement with populism’s temporal dimension. As a result, time is offered as a theoretically nuanced hermeneutical tool capable of strengthening the analysis of the popular subject’s positionality – hence shedding some valuable light on both the processes of identity constitution and antagonistic structuration of the social. These theoretical propositions are corroborated empirically through the example of Berlusconi’s government.
Author: Mirko Palestrino (Queen Mary University of London) -
The present epoch is characterized by startling technological and economic advances on the one hand and conditions of extreme socio-economic retrogression and distress on the other hand. Another discernible trend that has ebbed and flowed since the 19th century has been the rise of populism in various parts of Europe and North America. Socio-economic distress in the world has gone hand in hand with disaffection in the citizenry with incumbent regimes and the quest for alternatives. In these times of crises, political outliers have appealed to a polarized population to further their political agenda and seize power. Populism has generally been complicit with ideologies such as nationalism, liberalism or socialism. However, in the contemporary era, with a gradual erosion of trust in processes such as globalization, the welfare state, financial institutions in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis has meant a rising trend towards the waning of trust in liberalism in general and liberal democracy in particular. This trend towards mistrusting institutions and the competence of democratic governments in changing the plight of people has pushed communities that have not reaped the dividends of processes such as globalization, to depose faith in more radical and extreme far-right and far-left stances, along with newer denomination of alt-right. A catalytic role in the proliferation of these trends has been played by a rapid increase in technological progress especially in telecommunication, internet, and social networking. Technological progress has intensified the spread of misinformation, fake news, and alternative facts. These appendages along with populism have gravely affected the legitimacy of liberalism as an ideology and weakened the four pillars of democracy, in turn, giving rise to authoritarianism and illiberal democracies. This paper will delve into the rising tendencies of illiberal democracies and strategies of countering illiberalism. To understand the tendencies of illiberalism we will try to look into developing trends of illiberalism in Hungary, Turkey, Myanmar, Poland, Egypt and India and debates surrounding these conceptions.
Author: Abhishank Mishra (Jawaharlal Nehru University )
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Panel / Russian foreign/security policy and discourse Sandhill RoomSponsor: Russian and Eurasian Security Working GroupConvener: RESG Working groupChair: Precious Chatterje-Doody (Open University)
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This paper will propose a novel conceptualisation of status aspirations in international politics by linking them to evolving historical narratives and unpacking their cognitive, normative and emotional implications for foreign policy decision-makers. It will then apply the proposed conceptualisation to the empirical analysis of Russia's historical narratives of status and their implications for Russian foreign policy during President Putin's rule. The paper will demonstrate how Russia's dominant historical narratives, as articulated by President Putin and his close allies over the past 20 years,have increasingly linked Russia's 'rightful' status to an institutionally-anchored parity with the United States, which, in their view, Russia is entitled to achieve despite the asymmetry of Moscow's and Washington's capabilities.
Authors: Valentina Feklyunina (Newcastle University ) , James Bilsland (Newcastle University )* -
Eurasia has become something of a buzzword for all manner of attempts to define regional identities, integration projects and the relationship between “old” Europe and “new” Asia. Among the state actors talking Eurasia, the Putin-regime in Russia has been the most active. For decades, Russian political discourse has flirted with the well-established Eurasianist worldview narratives advocated by certain Russian political actors, in which Russia’s central position in the Eurasian continent provides it with a unique role in the world. While the premier foreign policy project of third-term Putin was the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Most recently, the Russian political machine has begun promoting the notion of a Greater Eurasia arrangement, in which the EEU would operate as the institutional pivot in a transcontinental economic arrangement including the European Union and ASEAN. Against this background, this chapter investigates how the notion of Eurasia as a region, continent and abstract space operate within these Russian political discourses. It is argued that the notion of Eurasia functions as the conduit tying together a particular metageographical and scalar imaginary with more pragmatic attempts at instituting a political-economic spatial fix.
Authors: Aglaya Snetkov , Stephen Aris (University of Geneva)* -
This paper builds on the ‘hybrid exceptionalist’ understanding of Russia’s hierarchical world-view introduced in Oskanian (2018). Moscow’s long-held policy discourses and practices are thus seen as entwined with a (post-)imperial geopolitical imaginary separating a sphere of influence from both ‘East’ and ‘West’, through both an ‘imitation’ of and a ‘doubling down’ on difference (Zaraköl, 2017)) from the Western core of modernity. In the contemporary context, this occurs through the appropriation and instrumentalization of liberal concepts – including ‘humanitarian intervention’ - on the one hand; and the (mis)appropriation of subaltern identities on the other. I illustrate these points through an analysis of the discourses of Russian media, think-tanks, and policymakers surrounding two recent conflicts: one – the Russo-Georgian war of 2008 – situated in the Eastern borderlands of its claimed ‘sphere of special interests’; the other – the ongoing intervention in Ukraine – in its Western periphery. In the former case, the tropes used in justifying disciplining projections of power are posited to contain ‘orientalising’ characteristics, in addition to the geopolitical arguments on the perceived Western/NATO threat; in the latter instance, it is argued that discourses will be based on the construction of a mostly Western – rather than oriental - ‘other’. The paper will conclude by considering the implications of Russia’s ‘hybrid exceptionalist’ world-view for present and future relations between Moscow, Kyiv, Tbilisi, and the West.
Author: Kevork Oskanian (University of Birmingham) -
Considering the most recent events of EU refusing to start accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania, the Western Balkans risk on turning for acceptance towards another global power. This ally might as well be Russia. Within this scenario, scholars and policy makers have increasingly focused on Russia’s soft power in the region. However, the study of Russia’s soft power is both, underestimated and distorted. Such misinterpretation in part derives from a liberal democratic bias in the study of soft power in international relations, which sees Russia’s soft power either as devoid of any distinctive ideological values, and a mere instrument of foreign policy’s goals; or as herald of illiberal anti-Western values with the aim of overthrowing the current international order. This article aims to answer whether Russian soft power has or will have an influence in the Western Balkan countries beyond its hitherto conceptualizations as instrumental or ideological. Through an analysis of polls and elite discourses as exemplified in speeches, press releases and interviews, this article focuses on the Western Balkan’s encounter with Russia’s soft power. This study does not question the presence of Russia’s influence in the region; nevertheless, it locates, challenges and further develops on Russia’s soft power indicators in the fragile region of the Western Balkans during fragile times.
Authors: Adriana Cuppuleri (University of Trento) , Liridona Veliu (Dublin City University) -
This paper aims at evaluating the magnitude of the changes in Russia’s defence policy and military posture over the last 10 years, answering two main questions. Firstly, to what extent have the military reforms initiated in 2008 impacted on the capabilities of the Russian armed forces? Secondly, has the Russian approach to war-fighting changed over time? That is, does today’s Russia intend to use its armed forces under different conditions and in different ways than before? In order to answer these question, I critically analyse both the reforms implemented so far in the defence sector and the content of articles published in professional Russian military journals. I will show that while Russia’s armed forces are in a better shape than before, the Russian approach to war-fighting has not changed considerably. It is so because a typically Russian strategic culture permeates security thinking and practice, anchoring them to a rather static national image. This hinders the ability to implement significant structural reforms and to approach conflict in new and innovative ways. My conclusions will be relevant for both academic debate and praxis, casting doubts on the resurgence of the Russian military and the existence of anything similar to a Russia-branded hybrid warfare.
Author: Nicolo Fasola (University of Birmingham)
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Roundtable / Taking Ontological Insecurity (More) Seriously: The Future of Ontological Security Studies in International Relations Pandon Room
Where lies the future of ontological security studies (OSS) in International Relations? Drawn primarily from the work of Anthony Giddens, ontological security has so far provided International Relations with valuable tools to better understand why identity commitments matter so greatly to international actors seeking security within and beyond their borders. However, by regarding chaos as the sole alternative to the maintenance of practices that support an established role-identity, OSS fails to adequately capture the variety of identity maintenance techniques at work in international politics. In particular, it explains the persistence of established identities, routines, and relations, but does a poor job of addressing modifications to established formations. This matters because international contexts are especially fluid, requiring actors to frequently adjust and recalibrate how they go on and, in some cases, how they see themselves and others. OSS’s unduly conservative bias in this respect risks reifying the identities, routines, and narratives that actors work very hard and continuously to produce. This roundtable proposes a different way forward for OSS by shifting focus to ontological insecurity. Participants will discuss the different ways that actors respond to the profound anxiety that ontological insecurity generates, and highlight the varied effects of such responses. They will also reflect on how to cultivate a more complex and dynamic approach to the politics of ontological in/security.
Sponsor: Interpretivism in International Relations Working GroupChair: Christopher Browning (University of Warwick)Participants: Marco Vieira (University of Birmingham) , Dmitry Chernobrov (University of Sheffield) , Jakub Eberle (Institute of International Relations, Prague) , Andy Hom (University of Edinburgh) , Sarah A. Son (University of Sheffield) , John Cash (University of Melbourne) , Shahnaz Akhter (University of Warwick) -
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Panel / The ‘Brexit Moment’ in EU External Action Parsons RoomSponsor: European Security Working GroupConveners: Benjamin Martill (University of Edinburgh) , Nicholas Wright (University College London)Chair: Andre Barrinha (University of Bath)Discussant: Nicola Chelotti ( Loughborough University)
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This paper examines the nature of EU development policy post Brexit. Brexit will occur at a key time for the future of EU development policy with the renegotiation of the post 2020 ACP-EU partnership and the post 2020 European Development Fund at key moments. After exploring potential scenarios for EU aid post Brexit, the paper will explore how the loss of one of the largest contributors to the EU’s international development budget and one of the world’s largest bilateral donors will impact on EU development policy going forward. It will examine how Brexit might impact on the links between development aid and foreign and security policy, how the geographical focus of EU aid might change and how the policy drivers of the policy might shift internally. Overall, it will contextualize Brexit within the shifts in conceptualising, and implementing EU development policy, from the rise in human security/R2P strands, to the security-development nexus in the Cotonou, in the EEAS' recent global strategy and the general "resilience" turn.
Author: Amelia Hadfield (University of Surrey) -
This paper re-examines the capability–expectations gap in the European Union’s foreign policy in light of recent developments in this field. Our point of departure is the observation that the expectations being placed on the EU’s foreign and security capabilities in recent years have been steadily increasing, in response to a number of external and internal developments, including the Arab Spring, the Ukraine crisis and America’s ‘pivot’ to Asia, as well as the Brexit vote. We argue, however, that the institutional changes introduced as a result have not succeeded in fulfilling the lofty ambitions held of the Union either by itself or by other actors since they suffer from many of the same failings that have persistently bedevilled EU security initiatives. The result is a mismatch between the EU’s ambitions and its ability to deliver on these, which threatens to reopen the capabilities–expectations gap, which has been steadily declining since the late 1990s. Existing scholarly approaches have missed this problematic dynamic since they have focused more on the institutional changes (the supply side) rather than the increasing expectations (the demand side). While pronouncements regarding Europe’s ‘strategic autonomy’ and such like offer clear gains for European leaders in the short term, they may come back to haunt them in the years to come.
Authors: Benjamin Martill (University of Edinburgh) , Monika Sus (Hertie School)* -
Brexit will involve the most significant re-alignment of UK foreign policy and diplomacy in more than 40 years, particularly in terms of Britain’s relations with its European partners. Having been at the heart of the processes of institutionalised foreign policy cooperation that have evolved under the auspices of the EU - and been a major player in these - the UK will now find itself on the outside, its capacity to influence key debates and decision-making significantly reduced. Yet the UK and its former EU partners retain many common strategic interests, while the UK remains one of Europe’s key foreign policy powers. How should the two sides seek to engage following British withdrawal? What will be needed to establish an effective new foreign, security and defence relationship? This paper argues that if the UK is able to set out a clear and strategic vision for its longer-term foreign policy, it has a unique opportunity to re-boot its relations with its European partners, thereby re-establishing and strengthening its credentials as a serious and engaged international actor.
Author: Nicholas Wright (University College London) -
The relationship that the United Kingdom and the European Union have built since 1992 is one of the most interesting in the field of Justice and Home Affairs (JHA), a policy area characterised by differentiated integration (Svendsen and Adler-Nissen, 2019) and variable geometry (Usher, 1997). The introduction of the Justice and Home Affairs Pillar led to the emergence of a UK-EU relationship articulated around notions of exceptionalism and based on the selective participation of the UK in EU JHA cooperation instruments such as the European Arrest Warrant or Europol (Carrapico et Al., 2019). Such relationship has been fundamental, not only in the construction of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, but also in its external dimension, which has gradually become one of the most important areas of EU external relations (Monar, 2017; Carrapico and Trauner, 2012). Since the Brexit referendum, however, policy discussions have focused on the way this relationship is expected to evolve, leading not only to changes in UK-EU internal security cooperation, but also to shifts in EU external relations. In practice, the planned UK-EU security agreement entails the loss of a Member State that plays a central security role in JHA and its shift to the external dimension. The current paper proposes to explore the impact that Brexit governance is having on the external dimension of Justice and Home Affairs by focusing on two elements: 1) the changing identity of the external dimension of JHA and the perceptions of what is politically, legally and diplomatically possible in the context of the UK-EU future security relationship, and 2) what the specific case of the external dimension of JHA has to say about the impact of Brexit on EU external relations.
Author: Helena Farrand Carrapico (Northumbria University) -
Much of the debate about the impact of Brexit has focused primarily on economic and macro-political issues, while little attention has been paid to the meso-level of governance where most UK-EU cooperation currently takes place. In particular researchers have largely neglected contingencies and crisis management, despite these being critical areas of transnational security governance. This article aims to address this oversight by assessing whether and how UK crisis governance will adapt as a result of Brexit. In line with wider debates about the nature and impact of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, it assesses whether crisis governance will undergo a period of “epochal change” or maintain “significant continuities with the past” as well as the contingency and timing of any such changes (Wincott, 2017). It addresses this question through a detailed examination of two areas of UK crisis governance – pandemics and gas supply deficits that exhibit differing degrees of europeanisation. We argue that change and continuity will play out in contingent ways over different time-scales. In the short-term, Brexit will not result in a complete decoupling of UK and EU crisis governance. Based on interviews with active participants in the networks for governing pandemics and gas-supply deficits, we find evidence of a continued willingness to pursue adaptive strategies to maintain coordination and cooperation between the UK and EU within the constraints of the terms of the UK’s withdrawal and the negotiation of the future UK-EU relationship. However in the longer term there is an expectation and concern that cooperation will become increasingly difficult to sustain due to regulatory divergence.
Authors: Andrew Judge (University of Glasgow) , John Connolly (University of the West of Scotland)*
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Panel / Changing markets and social development in Africa: technology, norms and practices Stephenson RoomSponsor: Africa and International Studies Working GroupConvener: Laura Routley (Newcastle)Chair: Kathy Dodworth (University of Edinburgh)
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Although the very idea of a fourth industrial revolution is controversial, it is clear that there is a profound socio-technical transformation taking place, at different locations, at different paces, across the globe. One of the critical pillars of this transformation is the digital economy. For Africa, shifts in the global economy have many immense implications for democratic processes, social stability, as well as its international relations. A critical area that has the potential for empowerment, or entrenched exclusion, is digital identity. On paper, digital identity management has several advantages: better management of social safety nets, reduction of the phenomenon of ‘ghost workers’, and administration of intercontinental migration flows. This augurs well for the actualisation of the Continental Free Trade Area. However, this heady optimism ignores the genuine challenges that the continent face such as systemic difficulties in registering births – whether in analogue or digital; the inherent risk of the weaponising of digital information particularly in countries prone to xenophobia or tribalistic conflicts; and, lastly the question of who should control this data flows.
I consider whether or not adopting digital identity management systems is a panacea for Africa's developmental challenges.Author: Odilile Ayodele -
This paper applies a Polanyian political economy perspective to the understanding of neoliberal fatigue within African business communities. Engaging Polanyi’s concepts of the double movement and re-embedding, it attempts to make sense of an apparent paradox – namely that private sector stakeholders, who ostensibly ought to be beneficiaries of neoliberal reform, are in many cases calling for greater state regulation for equitable development. In particular, the article examines the case of Ghana, a West African country routinely held to be a ‘donor darling’ in terms of faithful adherence to free market prescriptions promoted by the Word Bank, among other Western donors. In the Ghanaian context, it draws upon semi-structured interviews conducted with business people in three private sector communities – the poultry industry, the tomato sector, and the cocoa industry. Through examination of these interviews, the article points to a striking common theme, namely that all three business communities call for the re-embedding of the market to better serve moral goals of poverty alleviation. In this vein, the article provides an original contribution to existing studies of Polanyi by illustrating the efficacy of his analysis for making sense of fatigue with free market reform in African political economies today. Moreover, it demonstrates that private sector actors, perhaps counterintuitively, can prove important advocates for a double movement.
Author: Mark Langan (Newcastle University) -
There´s been a long and contentious debate about the desirability of foreign direct investment (FDI) from transnational corporations (TNCs) for the economic and socio-political development of host countries. One important area of impact is if and how FDI effects conflict in host countries. There are theoretical reasons to think that FDI may pacify host-country conflict by bringing employment or strengthening state finances and capacity but also arguments that FDI may enhance the prospects for conflict via a “honey pot” effect. Empirically the issue remains unresolved. This study re-examines the question by utilizing local, geo-referenced data on both conflict and FDI. This data allows us to employ a spatial-temporal, difference-in-difference, approach which allows us to mitigate some of the endogenous selection effects of both conflict and FDI. Using this approach to look at a grid of nearly 5 million sites in Arica, we find strong evidence that the arrival of local FDI exacerbates local conflict.
Authors: Samuel Brazys (University College Dublin) , Indra de Soysa (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)* , Krishna Vadlamannati (University College Dublin)* -
Analytical debate about the shape and content of EU development cooperation relations has increasingly highlighted an apparent move by the EU to a more interest driven policy format, representing a shift from the norms of social justice to a more pragmatic and instrumentalised approach. A thorough engagement with longstanding critical debates (such as Ravenhill 1985) and more recent contributions (Langan 2018, Nicolaides 2015, Price and Nunn 2004, 2018) argue however that this has been a longstanding and fundamental characteristic of the Africa-EU relationship, shaped by the experience colonialism and the configuration of post-colonial relations. Taking this critical perspective as a starting point, this paper will examine whether we are experiencing a fundamental shift in the operation of EU relations towards Africa, or a reiteration of its existing structural features. The empirical focus will be on the most recent changes to the relationship, in light of the re-negotiation of the Cotonou Agreement, the proposed overhaul of the EU Multi-Annual Financial Framework and the disintegrative/integrative impacts of Brexit. The paper will argue that the combination of these forces signals an internal re-ordering of the operation and scope of the Africa-EU relationship alongside an external reconfiguration of competitive forces and structures, which have provided a discursive dynamic to the expression of interests. However it will be argued that this reiterates the longstanding character of the relationship, shaped particularly by the EU’s interests in securing its position within the continent of Africa and within a broader changing global political economy.
Author: Sophia Price (Leeds Beckett University)
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Panel / Christendom in International Relations: imaginaries and afterlives Martin Luther KingSponsor: Historical Sociology and International Relations Working GroupConvener: John Heathershaw (University of Exeter)Chair: Brieg Powel (Exeter)
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This paper explores the ideas of community, authority and legitimacy with the example of Holy See diplomacy. Several example exist, domestically the twelfth century French Peace of God movement, and internationally the 1454 mediation when Pope Nicholas V awarded the Canary Islands to Portugal. The most prominent of these is the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. This treaty, under Pope Alexander VI, peacefully divided Latin America between the Spanish and Portuguese Empires. Only the Holy See had the legitimacy and authority to mediate and impose such an agreement through its unique status and spiritual mission. Using the solidarist branch of the English School as its framework, the paper argues that a greater sense of community can support shared norms. This sense of community connects to the idea of Christendom with the papacy at its centre. This has relevance for modern superpowers such as the United States and China in the contested unipolar era. Their military might is not sufficient to ensure their authority. Instead, legitimacy comes from an understanding of the community of states and how power is exercised to bolster existing norms.
Author: Luke Cahill (Bath) -
Analyses of religion in historical international relations have tended to focus on either its role as an identity marker that constitutes different groups (Keene 2005; Nexon 2009; Costa Lopez 2016) or on its ideational dimension through studies of political theology (Bain 2017). This, however, obscures the ways in which religion has been articulated in a variety of social practices and historical contexts, and how this has served to constitute different internationals. In order to highlight the social element of religion, this paper zooms in on a particular religious practice – proselytism – and a specific community of practitioners - missionaries. Surprisingly, despite occasional mentions in the literature, extant scholarship has not addressed missionaries as international actors. In order to do this, this paper looks at Catholic missionaries from the thirteenth century renewed missionary impulse to the sixteenth century colonization of America. By looking at their training, activities, traveling, and daily practices, the paper sketches a social history of missionaries that reveals a distinct international imaginary that challenges common disciplinary conceptions.
Author: Julia Costa Lopez (University of Groningen) -
What is Christendom in IR? Christendom does not equate to a particular historical empire or community of believers but a series of theo-political imaginaries of a world where the church and secular authorities share power. As intellectual historians of the discipline have demonstrated, International Relations (IR) was founded on the ontology and theology of Christendom – and then rapidly forgot that fact. One major feature of this forgetting is a narrow historical conception of Christendom – its equation with Latin Christendom – in contrast with the wealth of scholarship in the humanities which has revealed various conceptual forms and practical examples of Christendom from the fourth century to the present. The effect of this narrowness has been to confirm IR’s historical eurocentrism and prevent it from exploring the international politics of Eurasian, eastern orthodox forms of Christendom and signs of new Christendoms emerging in the Global South. But such neo-Christendom raises the possibility of the very violence associated with Latin Christendom. Alternative theologies of post-Christendom suggest such outcomes are far from determined. These theologies may also be most attractive to agnostic IR scholars willing to engage with political theology as an interpretative framework. In this vein, the article advocates a plural and global conception of Christendom in our descriptive theory and normatively advocates ‘post-Christendom’ as a model of the politics of Christianity on a global scale.
Author: John Heathershaw (University of Exeter) -
What is most striking from the viewpoint of the study of international relations is that Francis of Assisi’s transformative life story began with a war - the main type of event that led to the foundingof international relations. His transformative life story took place in medieval Europe at a time of tremendous social, political, and economic changes: (i) the early medieval rise of capitalism and the market economy (as something more than a new type of economic system of organisation, but also the early rise of the cultureof capitalism); and (ii) the transition from a medieval ‘mixed-actor’ type of international system (i.e. a variety of types of political actors) to new types of political actors - the rise of the communesor city-states, and the mimetic rivalry between them, which eventually led to the Renaissance city-state type of international system. This paper revisits the Franciscan story from the perspective of international relations theory. Firstly, it begins to show how critical theory and social constructivism in international relations theory may offer a new optic for recognizing and appreciating the ways Francis offered a counter-cultural critique of Christendom (perhaps, not so readily apparent in the conventional Franciscan narrative); secondly, it establishes the elements of a ‘Franciscan’ model, or pattern of Muslim-Christian relations, and international relations – encounter, conversion, knowledge, and transformation; which, thirdly, is evident in Pope Francis’s culture of encounter, the defining concept of his papacy, and the way he has extended this concept to the Middle East with the concept of human fraternity.
Author: Scott Thomas (Bath)
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Roundtable / Cultivating an Inclusive Discipline: Constructions, Challenges, and Conduct in Contemporary Academia’ Sandhill Room
Using the short film 'Let Her Speak' as a conversation starter, this roundtable will explore ongoing practices of exclusion in academia alongside practical actions that can be undertaken by individuals, departments, universities, and disciplinary associations to change them.
Sponsor: #FutureIR @NclPoliticsChair: Kyle Grayson (BISA)Participant: Saara Saarma (Tampere University) -
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Panel / European Journal of International Security Pandon RoomSponsor: European Journal of International SecurityConvener: Kyle Grayson (BISA)Chair: Kyle Grayson (BISA)
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Panel / Everyday imaginaries of war and conflict Bewick RoomSponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working GroupConvener: EPIR Working groupChair: Naomi Head (University of Glasgow)
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How do people make sense of distant, but disturbing international events? Why are some representations more appealing than others? And most importantly, what do they mean for how societies imagine themselves?
Going beyond conventional analysis of perception at the level of accuracy, this paper will argue that public attitudes to international crises are shaped primarily by local anxieties, emotions, cultural memories, insecurities and hopes, and above all - by the societal need for positive and continuous self-conceptions. I will look for the drawing self behind its portraits of others - the inner motivations and needs of a subject that lead it to perceive events and their agents in a certain light.
This paper will draw on original interview materials and polling data to examine public perception of the Arab Spring in Russia and the UK as these crises unraveled, relate these perceptions to dominant political and media representations, and make an argument both about and beyond this particular case. The paper will provide evidence of how societies idealise themselves through imagining distant others in times of crises and uncertainty. Anxiety reduction and identity self-affirmation - not accuracy - will be shown as the key elements that determine public attitudes to major international events.Author: Dmitry Chernobrov (University of Sheffield) -
Recent scholarship claims that narratives and images of war have political effects, not simply because of their content and ‘form’, but because of their affective and emotional ‘forces’. Yet, International Relations scholars rarely explore how audiences respond to narratives and images of war in their research. Addressing this gap, this paper combines discourse analysis of RT (formerly Russia Today) ‘breaking news’ YouTube videos of Russian military intervention in Syria with analysis of 750 comments and social media interactions on those videos. Our findings demonstrate how RT layers moral and legal justifications for Russian intervention in multiple audio-visual formats, within a visual narrative of the conflict that relies on affective representations of key actors/events. Viewers largely approve of the content, replicate its core narratives and express emotions coherent with RT’s affective representation of the Syrian conflict. Audiences’ responses to these narratives and images of war were shaped by their affective investments in the identities and events portrayed on-screen. These affective investments are therefore crucial in understanding the political significance of images of armed conflict.
Authors: Precious Chatterje-Doody (Open University) , Rhys Crilley (Open University)* -
The paper develops the role of emotions within the literature on Feminist Institutionalism. Although Feminist Institutionalism raises questions concerning the gendered and racialised power relations that institutions may challenge or perpetuate within the socio-political order, the current literature lacks a sustained scholarly engagement with emotions, embodiment and affect (Celermajer et al. 2019). The paper bridges the gap between Feminist Institutionalism and feminist IR and cultural approaches on emotions in order to develop a novel conceptual framework that facilitates the study of embodied subjectivities and emotional narratives within military institutions. It argues that military education entails not only bodily training but also affective training, which is part and parcel of cultivating collective and individual military subjectivities. To this aim, the paper focuses on military educational practices through which Israeli recruits are trained to work with and through their emotions in order to develop their military subjectivities. Therefore, it shows emotions are not only part and parcel of Israeli military education, but they are also complicit in and with the emergence of racialised and gendered military subjectivity that elevates the moral standing, the vulnerability and the cosmopolitanism of Israeli military subjectivity, and which weakens accusations of Israeli military’s human rights violations against Palestinians. Apart from developing a novel conceptual framework that bridges the gap between Feminist Institutionalism and Feminist IR through the lens of the role of emotions in military education, the paper examines the political consequences of the Israeli military’s self-representation as a benign entity within the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Author: Sorana Jude (Newcastle University) -
This paper aims to contribute to the emerging literature in IR which has been deploying psychoanalytical frameworks, particularly Lacanian, to the study of international politics. It argues that two of the themes explored by this literature – the constitution of the subject and the resonance of some political discourses – could be enriched and rendered more context-attuned if psychoanalytical and postcolonial insights are interwoven. Bringing to the fore the work of postcolonial authors who have employed and adapted psychoanalytical concepts and frameworks to colonial and postcolonial settings, it aims to discuss the difference between the frustration experienced in all processes of subject formation and the psychic pain and injury sustained in the processes of identification in hierarchical and violent contexts. Furthermore, this paper aims to problematize the assumption that political discourses tend to be more appealing if they promise stable and secure identities by calling attention to those who are not drawn to, and/or actively resist, discourses deemed politically effective. By situating the processes described by psychoanalysis, the purpose of this work is to develop a richer conceptual framework, attuned to the discursive and affective specificities of different contexts.
Author: Paula Sandrin (Institute of International Relations, PUC-Rio, Brazil) -
The paper focusses on specific ways in which the imagined alternatives of cooperation are enacted with a shared vision for the future in conflict situations. While some of these performances and practices are concrete and easily discernable, however, there are others that are much more nuanced and implicit. The discussion entailed in this chapter highlights the temporal proximities in resistance movements resulting out of shared pain, everyday lived experiences of oppression and marginalization. Such bonds of pain create an envisioned alternative that is not a part of the superimposed and practical imaginations but a utopia devoid of pain and oppression. To elaborate this, the chapter explores the act of motherhood in resistance movements of Kashmir and Palestine, to understand how the circulation of ideas, imaginaries and cooperative practices transcends the local boundaries in conflict. The performative role of motherhood in funerals and mourning practices point towards the discovery of parallels in their respective lived experiences. Such alternative cooperative practices that move beyond borders and an explicit motive are simply sustained through pain and loss; and provide significant entry points for theorizing cooperation differently. Visual representations such as graffiti, poetry on graves and folk songs are used as significant references to highlight the invisible bonds of shared pain.
Author: Amya Agarwal (Centre for Global Cooperation Research)
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Panel / In, against and beyond International Relations: Disciplinary investigations and interventions Armstrong RoomSponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working GroupConvener: CPD Working groupChair: Kerem Nişancıoğlu (SOAS)Discussant: Kerem Nişancıoğlu (SOAS)
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International Relations (IR) defines itself as a discipline by adhering to a Westphalian narrative centred on 1648. The following paper argues that IR should broaden its engagement with world history to consider the international prior to 1648 and to examine global and transnational historical accounts which challenge the states in anarchy framework. This paper examines how pre-modern history is often used within IR as a foil for which western superiority is defined. It concludes by arguing for the need to re-read the processes of modernity and imperialism that are commonly seen as the prelude to the familiar Eurocentric stories told in IR.
Author: Kevin Blachford (Baltic Defence College) -
In recent years, a growing number of scholars began to advocate for more geographical inclusiveness and cultural diversity in International Relations (IR) as outlined in the Global IR project (Acharya, 2013, 2014, 2016). They assumed national and/or regional schools of thought from the Global South, such as Asian, Latin American, African, Chinese, Indian or Brazilian, as necessary antidotes to the problem of Western-centrism in IR. Notwithstanding the positive steps taken by Global IR scholars in promoting much needed epistemic diversity, I argue in this paper that claims for more representation from non-Western states, regions or civilizations, often rely on uncritical assumptions about the relationship between geographical location and knowledge production. I draw from anti-colonial/post-colonial intellectuals like Frantz Fanon to claim that too often the Global IR debate, even if inadvertently, reproduces ‘territorial essentialisms’ wherein difference from the West is proclaimed so to secure an illusory space of authenticity and autonomy for non-Western knowledge traditions. I build on the example of émigré scholars, such as the author of this paper, to propose the recasting of Global IR as grounded on the emergence of multiple and intellectually hybrid communities of knowledge that are not dissolved in the reified image of Western/non-Western regional and national academies.
Author: Marco Vieira (University of Birmingham) -
Can International Relations (IR) be studied without reproducing its violence? This is the central question of this article. To investigate this, the first step is to expose the violence that we argue remains at the heart of our discipline. The article thus begins by exploring the disciplinary practices firmly grounded in relations of coloniality that plague disciplines more broadly and IR in particular. An analysis of IR's epistemic violence is followed by an autoethnographic exploration of IR's violent practices, specifically the violent practices in which one of the article's authors knowingly and unknowingly engaged in as part of an impact-related trip to the international compound of Mogadishu International Airport in Somalia. Here the article lays bare how increasing demands on IR scholars to become "international experts" having impact on the policy world is pushing them more and more into spaces governed by colonial violence they are unable to escape. The final section of this article puts forward a tentative path toward a less violent IR that advocates almost insignificant acts of subversion in our disciplinary approach and practices aimed at exposing and challenging this epistemic and structural violence. The article concludes that IR does not need to be abandoned, but rather, by taking on a position of discomfort, needs to acknowledge its violence and attempt to mitigate it - one almost insignificant step at a time.
Authors: Lucas Van Milders (University of Groningen) , Harmonie Toros (University of Kent) -
In recent years, IR scholars bridged between classical realism and critical theory. In doing so, they problematised realism’s caricatured position in the disciplinary history of IR. The question of problematising disciplinary history has also been central to post-colonial scholars in recent years. Post-colonial scholarship problematised the canons of a colonial discipline, with realism (in all its strands) at the centre. But these two debates have not spoken to one another. Should they do so, they will reveal a curious puzzle: how can our understanding of classical realism be caricatured and colonial at the same time? It is here that this paper makes an intervention and argues that realists such as E. H. Carr presented early critiques of Eurocentrism in the discipline and attempted to transcend this problem in the Twenty Years’ Crisis. The significance of this argument does not simply lie in (yet another) reinterpretation of classical realism to bridge its divide with post-colonialism. Rather, it exposes the Eurocentric origins of the Eurocentric critique, thus presenting a fundamental challenge to post-colonial IR.
Author: Haro Karkour (University of Birmingham) -
The epistemologies of the South concern the production and validation of knowledges anchored in the experiences of resistance of those social groups that have systematically suffered injustice, oppression, and destruction caused by capitalism and colonialism. This paper offers a methodological contribution to the post-critique momentum in IR by answering the following questions: (i) what are the social dimensions of epistemology that we need to focus on in order to address the recursive paradox of giving into the dominant modes of inquiry and (ii) which resources can we use to guide this shift and decentre ourselves from our current socialisation? In order to engage with the first question, the paper critiques the perception of modern scientific culture as a disembodied monoculture by using De Sousa Santos’s notion of “ecology of knowledges”. The second part of the paper focuses on the issue of ‘epistemic imperialism’ and utilises Indigenous knowledge systems as an analytical framework with emancipatory potential representing one of the possible means of decolonizing knowledge. The paper thus advocates epistemic re-prioritization and revivification of emancipative desire within the IR academia by posing vexatious ethical questions, hidden behind issues of epistemic inequality.
Author: Ananya Sharma (Ashoka University)
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Panel / International Responsibility in Theory and Practice Swan RoomSponsor: Ethics and World Politics Working GroupConvener: EWPG Working groupChair: Robin Dunford (University of Brighton)Discussant: Susan Murphy (Trinity College Dublin)
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This paper assesses the violence perpetrated by drone operators by reference to the ethics of care (a mode of morality associated with feminist theory and virtue ethics). Historically, military professionals who kill on their society’s behalf have sometimes struggled to make moral sense of that killing. For some, it is not enough to receive assurances that they acted for a just cause and/or in accordance with prescribed ethical standards of warfighting. Rather, such moral reasoning (based on Just War principles) still leaves these killers with a sense of guilt and self-betrayal about taking a human life. This perpetration-induced ‘moral injury’, which can be deeply debilitating mentally, is increasingly recognised as one of the many unjust harms potentially resulting from war. Among the operators of armed drones, who typically experience no physical risk when they kill, moral injury is in theory a salient issue of victimhood even though the actual extent of its occurrence remains largely unknown. Presumably, at least some drone operators avoid this non-physical risk because their Just War thinking is sufficient to rationalise the remote-control killing of a person in a faraway place. For other drone operators, however, avoiding moral injury might require an additional mode of moral reasoning; one which accounts for the way a drone’s powerful video-camera enables close and prolonged observation of a prospective target’s prosaic humanity and personal relationships. Accordingly, this paper explores the idea that a drone operator’s decisions (on whether or when to kill) should be guided also by a feminist ethics of care. In contrast to Just War’s rights-and-rules approach, care ethics focuses on people not as abstract others but as real individuals with unique needs, and its emphasis is on persons in relation to each other. So, for the drone operator who richly perceives the humanity she has in common with a targeted individual, and whose actions are guided by care ethics, the question is: what is the virtuous way of conducting drone violence?
Author: Christian Enemark (University of Southampton) -
The presentations addresses debates on ‘responsibility’ continue to be a significant issue in 21st century International Relations, in particular in relation to humanitarian intervention, Just War Theory, and the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP). Many RtoP proponents consider the international community as a whole to be the bearer of this responsibility. However, the resulting position that ‘whoever can act, should’ ignores many of the traditional concerns about legitimate authority to engage in warfare.
This presentation contends that a more refined understanding of responsibility is needed. Responsibility (Verantwortung) includes the concepts of obligation (Verpflichtung) and duty (Pflicht). Obligation is context-specific, i.e. dependent on a commitment to an act or condition. Duty is likewise context-specific, and can apply even in the absence of any formal declarations of intent, for example in cases of remedial responsibility for past injustices (e.g. reparations).
With critical reference to the wider RtoP literature, I show that the mere ability to act does not necessarily confer the right to do so. Different types of responsibility come with distinctive rights and duties relating to intervention. A more comprehensive understanding of responsibility ensures the continued relevance of RtoP to 21st century international ethics and our understanding of the ‘Just War’.
Author: Evert Raafs (Durham University ) -
A Kantian approach in IR has come to be associated with principally a liberal IR. The call for a liberal grounding of IR, however, loses grasp of Kant’s grounding epistemology, and thus becomes a dogmatic enterprise in IR theory. I argue that Kantian approaches seeking to challenge Political Realism’s process of naturalising, unfortunately, relapse into dogmatism when they eventually seek totality for their theoretical proposition of “what we ought to do”, without proper treatment for Kant’s theory of knowledge. Hence, the essential problem Kantian IR is coping with concerns “the sources of normativity” and its justification. Accordingly, I propose that it is crucial for Kantian IR to take up the task of investigating its modus cognoscendi in a Kantian sense. My project takes up this challenge by revisiting John Rawls’ treatment for “the transcendental deduction” as the preferred standard for the reconstruction and application of Kantian thought in IR as a mode of enquiry and a site of politics.
Author: Chayuth Chamnanseth (University of Aberdeen) -
It has become commonplace to conceptualize justice in the context of international trade primarily in terms of equality of treatment in the application of common rules; reciprocity and equal obligations; parity of participation; and/or distribution. I take issue with this equivalence. Such equivalence is particularly problematic from the perspective of small developing states. Vulnerabilities associated with size, location and governance capacity circumscribe the way in which these states can participate: They are not equal players – they are different.
In this conceptual paper, a critical re-conceptualization of justice that takes account of difference is explored. Iris Marion Young’s framework, which focuses on the achievement of social justice in a domestic context by acknowledging social differences such as those based on race and gender, is adopted and its relevance argued in the international context of interstate (trade) negotiation so as to validate the notion of (size, location, and governance capacity) difference in this latter context. The point of departure is that while states are typically treated as equals in international law – as are individuals in liberal political theory – there are significant differences between states which warrant different treatment in the context of international (trade) rule-making.Author: LISA SAMUEL (NEW YORK UNIVERSITY)
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Panel / Learning lessons from the agenda for civilian protection by peacekeeping missions Daniel WoodSponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working GroupConvener: david curran (Coventry University)Chair: Walt Kilroy (Dublin City University)
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The protection of civilians by peacekeeping missions raises a number of difficult questions. Like R2P, there is an understandable focus on military options and the threat or use of force in order to advance the protection agenda. There are in fact three tiers of protection activities according to UN policy, only one of which involves military or police action. One of the other tiers relates to dialogue, mediation, and political processes, while the final one includes a broad peacebuilding and human rights agenda, with the aim of promoting a better environment for civilian protection. This paper looks at the tensions and synergies between these three tiers. Political engagement with armed groups who are potential perpetrators, for example, may not sit well with a military show of force or efforts to tackle impunity for human rights abuses. There may also be synergies and positive feedback loops. Understanding the way in which these three tiers interact can help us to assess how a holistic, integrated approach to the protection of civilians might be pursued.
Author: Walt Kilroy (Dublin City University) -
International organisations (IOs) work together to address global challenges. The literature on inter-organisational relations has focused on formal connections between IOs and specific instances of cooperation, overlooking long-term effects that IOs have on norms, policies, and practices in other IOs. But it is unable to explain the complexity of the international ecosystem in which the transfer occurs. In this article, we analyse how African Union’s relations with partners have influenced the development of policy and practice of its peace support operations over the past decade based on process tracing and elite interviews. Our research points to three key findings. First, inter-organisational interactions take place between complex entities with a multitude of departments, units, and individual officials. Second, inter-organisational exchanges involve not only IOs, but also external actors: academic experts, private contractors, think tanks, and civil society representatives, who shape how the IO considers policies and practices that circulate in its environment. Third, inter-organisational transfer is rarely unidirectional and uncontested: the process is fraught with struggles over expertise along regional and professional lines. It happens in an unequal terrain where dependency upon partners constrains the recipient IO, which, as a result, retains varying degrees of ownership of its norms, policies, and practices. Taken together, these three findings point to the need for a nuanced view of inter-organisational influence that recognises the complexity and contingency inherent in inter-organisational relations.
Authors: Kseniya Oksamytna (King's College London) , Nina Wilen (Egmont Institute for International Relations) -
This paper examines the requirement for ‘contact skills’ to be integrated into PoC training for military peacekeepers, and the resultant training requirements this brings. Alongside responses to protection which require traditional military approaches, a range of UN policy documentation has asked that military peacekeepers develop ‘soft skills’ such as negotiation and communication skills, cultural awareness and civilian-military coordination to better implement PoC mandates. Based on research of pre-deployment training programmes in PoC for UN peacekeepers, this paper argues that due to the demand for ‘soft skills’, there exists the potential to integrate creative forms of training for personnel, drawn from the conflict resolution field. This includes both training content – i.e. the topics – but also approaches and methods to training. Here, the paper examines the utility of ‘elicitive’ approaches to training, based on the implicit assumptions of training participants, as opposed to more traditional models which assume that an expert knows what training participants need.
The paper attempts to match these aspirations to the realities of the training field, and argues that significant structural problems exist which hinder such approaches to training for PoC. Here, the paper will examine the characteristics of the peacekeeper training system, which is largely decentralised to member states, contains programmes which are time limited, and has variations in training provision. From this, the paper will ask to what extent it is possible to implement ambitious training approaches, or whether UN peacekeeping will always be limited in this regard.
Author: david curran (Coventry University) -
A western-led emphasis on robust peacekeeping and civilian protection that is reflected in the mandates of recent United Nations peacekeeping missions is often met with well-documents instances of inaction on part of various troop contributing country (TCC) units in the field. What explains this gap between mandate and performance? Drawing on a combination of archival, secondary and primary data collected with Indian military peacekeepers, this paper explains how the Indian military has interpreted and applied the demands of robustness and civilian protection in its peacekeeping engagements across Africa over time. Drawing on micro case-studies from Katanga, Congo (1962), Sierra Leone (1999-2000), North Kivu (2005-2008), and South Sudan (2014-present), the study advances three prominent explanations. First, self-perception of its rising power in the international system, makes the Indian government less willing to act as a meek and conformist delegate of western peacekeeping mandates. Second, a lack of recognition of early robust efforts often above and beyond mandate requirements has marred Indian enthusiasm for risk over time. Third, economic prosperity and narrowing gaps in pay and benefits at home, make UN peacekeeping assignments in dangerous locations less appealing especially for the younger generation of officers. The overall result is a perceptible shift from fielding troops to becoming a leading provider of peacekeeping training for new peacekeeping troops from Africa and Asia.
Author: Sukanya Podder (King's College London)
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Panel / Let us open a Pandora’s box: Is India’s federalism exclusionary? Parsons RoomSponsor: #FutureIR @NclPoliticsConvener: Madhan Mohan Jaganathan (Jawaharlal Nehru University)Chair: Madhan Mohan Jaganathan (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
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Foreign policy has essentially remained as the domain of the Centre. The constitution of India gave little roles to the constituent states in the making and articulation of foreign policy. While the de jure status remains the same, the de facto expansion has happened with the states’ insidiously playing a more active role in foreign policy making since the end of the cold war, including on issues as diverse as trade, water-sharing, climate change and refugees. Of recent, however, there is an attempt by the Centre to impose a more unitary mode of federalism. The paper will grapple with this puzzle, while attempting to trace the trajectory of Indian federalism. The paper seeks to address the changing dynamics in the character of Indian federalism. The change indicates a shift from the domination by the Centre to a phase that witnessed an assertion of the federating units, and then a reassertion of unitary tendencies by the Centre. The paper further examines the course that the Centre-state relations would chart in the future.
Author: Amitabh Mattoo (Centre for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University) -
Why are constituent states within the union increasingly getting marginalised in spite of India being a federal democratic state? The paper grapples with this puzzle by historicising the crisis in contemporary India. Thankfully, Article 356 is no longer used as frequently – as it was in the past – to dismiss the governments of the constituent states that dared to defy the dictates of the central government in Delhi. Nonetheless, observed from the perspective of constituent states, the ‘federal’ feature is increasingly becoming non-existent owing to a Delhi-centric top-down imposition. Curiously some states are more vociferous than others; for instance, Tamil Nadu in the past and West Bengal in the present have been fiercely resisting the domination by Delhi. However, gradually most constituent states are feeling the pinch and experiencing an uneasiness vis-à-vis Delhi. It is tempting to say that the problem lies in the exclusionary politics of an ideologically committed government with a comfortable majority. Perhaps, it is accurate to say that the devil is in the details, in this case, the political and constitutional design of India, which provides ample leeway for any central government in Delhi, with an overwhelming majority to pursue exclusionary endeavours unabashedly, if it wants to.
Author: Madhan Mohan Jaganathan (Centre for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University) -
The idea of a distinctly Indian style of federalism has been much celebrated. While a semblance of its inclusive federal nature has always lingered, an inherent unitary tendency has only increased with time. Interestingly, this federal structure would ensure India sustaining itself as the vibrant secular pluralist democracy that it was conceived to be and would also embed and nourish the characteristic of ‘unity in diversity’ as the bedrock of its internal security. But, what has actually transpired has been an ever tightening noose from the centre which has ensured that even the modest tag of ‘quasi-federal’ becomes a bit too far-fetched. The Indian state, rather ironically has been plagued by a ‘national insecurity’ which while not unfamiliar to post-colonial states has been the starkest in India, more so because of its great potential of ‘rising’ as a pluralist democracy with a federal structure that takes all its diverse peoples along – a great but far from fulfilled potential. India’s federalism was always going to be an India-sized challenge, yet increasingly, the failures and the imaginations of ‘what could have been’ become starker. India’s federalism is hardly very inclusive, but with an ever-strengthening centre on a rampage undermining the autonomy of constituent states and the decentralisation of power therein, the exclusionary nature becomes more manifest. All this inevitably prompts the question of whether the emancipatory agenda of its constitution has been fulfilled and whether at all it has ever been inclusive enough, great proclamations notwithstanding, and that is where the margins speak for themselves.
Author: Mansoor Ashraf (Centre for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University) -
To what extent has federalism been challenged in India in the recent years? Is federalism a myth or a reality in the Indian context? In this paper, there is an attempt to look into the narratives of Indian federalism. The constitution of India does not commend that it is a federal state. Nevertheless, some traits of federal structure are visible. One feature that stands out among these is the acknowledgement of the uniqueness of the various regions in India in terms of language and culture. Therefore, the marginalisation of this variety becomes a challenge to the nuances of the federal structure in India. The question then is not whether federalism is at risk in India— it is a myth. It is the exclusion of the fringe groups and the cultural diversity which remains questionable. The mainstream opinion would look into the uniting feature of a purported federal system. This discourse masquerades the divisive tendencies of contemporary Indian politics. To this extent, the paper argues that it is not the external structure of federalism which faces any severe challenge. Rather the very foundation of India’s federalism is at risk.
Author: Amna Sunmbul (Oakridge International School, Bangalore) -
The paper seeks to address two issues pertaining to the recent Citizenship [Amendment] Act (CAA) in India. First, it engages with the problem of cultural intrusion faced by the states of the north-eastern region of India, specifically Assam. Second, it examines the communally exclusive nature of the Act that defies the idea of secularism enshrined in the Preamble of the Indian Constitution. Both these issues tilt the balance in favour of centralising tendencies of the federal system. On the problem of cultural intrusion, the Act goes against the Assam Accord of 1985 that provided for identification and deportation of illegal foreign immigrants to safeguard the local culture and economy. On the communal aspect, the Act allows non-Muslim persecuted minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to gain citizenship in India. The combination of CAA with a proposed National Register of Citizens will further lead to large-scale marginalisation of Muslims - Indian or otherwise. Theoretically, the paper examines these two issues through a post-structural lens. It examines the logic of othering and the reduction of certain life forms as ‘bare’. Methodologically, the paper uses critical discourse analysis in ascertaining the power relation between the right-wing central government and the marginalised masses.
Author: Abhishek Choudhary ( Centre for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University)
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Roundtable / Making Sense of International Law and Politics in the 21st Century Collingwood Room
International law and associated norms and institutions have been central to understanding the post-Cold War rules-based international order within international studies. The multilateral arrangements on which this order has relied, however, are under growing stress across sectors, as state and non-state actors seek to challenge, reshape, and withdraw from global and regional institutions and legal regimes. Ongoing developments across economic, environmental, human rights/humanitarian, and security-related spheres have given scholars and policy makers cause for concern as to the resilience and future prospects of international law as an instrument of international governance.
Do domestic, transnational and international challenges, such as growing nationalism, authoritarianism and illiberal democracy, alongside shifting global and regional power balances, call into question the stability and sustainability of international governance through a rules-based order? Or is it the case that international law’s “fundamental institutions” are sound and remain fit-for-purpose? Can we speak of international law as “under pressure” across the dimensions highlighted in scholarship, the media and policy discourse, or are we merely witnessing another passing phase in international law’s long history as a “discipline of crisis”?
The proposed roundtable will address these and related questions, considering from multiple disciplinary perspectives – including IR, law, and history - the manifestations, drivers, and implications of international law’s current “crisis” across dimensions in an (apparently) unstable international political environment, and assessing the challenges and opportunities facing governments and other international political actors and institutions.
Sponsor: International Law and Politics Working GroupChair: Andrea Birdsall (University of Edinburgh)Participants: David Bicknell (King's College London, War Studies) , Kerr Rachel (King's College London, War Studies) , Victor Peskin (Arizona State University, IR) , Kurt Mills (University of Dundee) , Henry Lovat (University of Glasgow) , James Gow (King's College London, War Studies) , Shaina Western (University of Edinburgh, IR) -
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Roundtable / Teaching and (Un)learning Gender, War and Militarism Council Chamber
This roundtable thinks critically about the practices, pedagogies and spaces of teaching and (un)learning the interrelated concepts of gender, war and militarism. While feminist research has long drawn connections between these concepts, as well as drawing attention to their embeddedness and (re)production in the ‘everyday’, insights from critical race, critical disability and Indigenous scholars have revealed the potential limitations of this (feminist) theorising. Starting from our role as ‘teachers’ (broadly configured), on this roundtable we grapple with what is at stake in the teaching of these concepts. Some of the questions this roundtable will consider are: What needs to be (un)learnt in teaching gender, war and militarism? What does it mean to locate ourselves as ‘teachers’ or ‘knowers’ of these concepts? How do we engage students with the possibility of change or resistance? What would it mean to engage ethically with both whom we teach and whom we teach about? What scope is there for genuinely critical pedagogies within the confines of contemporary university model? Drawing on experiences from both within HE and wider learning environments, the conversation is intended as a forum to share challenges, frustrations, rewards and possibilities of feminist teaching and learning.
Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working GroupChair: Julia Welland (University of Warwick)Participants: Julia Welland (University of Warwick) , Harriet Gray (University of York) , Chris Rossdale (University of Bristol) , Aiko Holvikivi (LSE) , Alice Cree (Newcastle University) -
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Panel / The Politics of Governance and Policy Katie AdieSponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working GroupConvener: PPWG Working groupChair: Dan Bulley (Oxford Brookes University)
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What are the influences of member states versus epistemic communities in the creation of knowledge production mechanisms at International Organizations (IOs)? And how do such knowledge production mechanisms reconcile the conflicting demands emanating from these two sides? This study compares the creation of three knowledge production mechanisms within the United Nations Security Council; it then draws a broader comparison to knowledge production mechanisms at further IOs, notably major economic IOs. The study discusses the explanatory power of rational design theory, constructivism, STS, and practice theory regarding the studied cases.
Author: Aurel Niederberger -
In 2017, ‘Belt and Road’ Initiative (BRI) was presented by the Chinese government as a global initiative for governance. This narrative, or from a post-structuralist perspective, this truth about BRI, is widely accepted both domestically and globally. However, the assumptions that underpin this particular truth and the conditions that produce it are rarely questioned. This paper investigates, therefore, these assumptions and conditions through applying the concept of assemblage. By doing so, it identifies suppressed elements within the BRI narrative that are salient to our understanding but have not been engaged with in current research. This paper argues that the truth about BRI is contingent and (re)produced through a continuous assembling process in which heterogenous elements, both human and non-human, interact with one another. In other words, by breaking down what the Chinese government has claimed about BRI into its component parts, this paper has found no inherent essence, in this case, being global, open, and cooperative, to this initiative beyond official written documents themselves. Instead, BRI has emerged as a solution to the ‘problems’ pertaining to China’s national identity and economic performance, and gradually become a regional, and then, global initiative enabled by China’s institutional design, its national identity conception, foreign policy discourses, infrastructure technology, and its landscape.
Author: Ran Hu (University of York) -
Understanding unintended consequences of policy is a key feature in contemporary policy making globally. Post-policy implementation evaluations and impact study approaches have become ‘best practice’ across government, business and the ‘third sector’ with the understanding that lessons will be learnt for next time around. Where unintended consequences are identified as negative this [AD2] rationale may serve little comfort for those adversely affected. This paper employs a different approach, grounded in poststructuralism , inspired by Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to Be’ framework. We draw on two case studies, one from Mexico and one from the UK from different policy sectors; [add years here] i) the Mexican government’s Social Development Ministry’s flagship poverty alleviation programme, ii) the UK government’s Department for International Development’s building support for international development policy, from 2010-2015. The findings reveal that policy discourses operate in various ways, at times inimical to the ostensive policy objectives. The implications for policymakers working under the assumption that their efforts are promoting equality are striking. In both case studies the predominant discourses are shown to undermine the explicit ameliorative intent of the policies. The contribution of this research is threefold. First, the findings deepen our empirical understanding of two distinct policies. Second, the findings highlight the ‘methodological’ value of using a poststructuralist approach in policy analysis. Third, perhaps most importantly, the findings offer policymakers a radical, concrete alternative to use in policymaking. With its capacity to be employed ahead of policy implementation this approach can anticipate unintended consequences hidden from immediate view. There are significant ramifications, in terms of better resource allocation as well as the potential to avoid adverse unintended consequences, and associated suffering. Given the boundless nature of discourse, the ramifications are further reaching still.
Authors: Donna Arrondelle (University of Portsmouth) , Carlos Cardenas Escutia (University College London (UCL))* -
The 2016 vote to leave the European Union has had serious effects on the political debate in a range of policy areas. In two of the most Europeanised policy areas, environment and agriculture, Brexit has acted as a dislocation opening the discussion to new problems, and new solutions. Not only this, but it has allowed for the possibility of a differentiated de-europeanisation across the United Kingdom. The UK is leaving the EU at a time of environmental crisis, and a crisis in environmental governance.
This paper considers the critiques of mainstream approaches to researching governance from critical theory, and in turn elaborates a hegemonic governance approach rooted in Discourse Theory. This approach offers the opportunity to take politics seriously and consider governance at a time of instability and change.
Northern Ireland has long been an environmental laggard with a series of court cases in the European Court of Justice, and no independent environmental protection agency. With over 1000 days without an executive the governing authorities have been attempting to navigate the development of post-Brexit authority and the necessary changes to environmental governance to deal with the present crisis, By including a range of political actors Northern Ireland has presented the perfect opportunity as a case study to illustrate this conception of governance using discourse theory to analyse the inclusions and exclusions within the policy network, and the logics driving the different discourses.
Therefore, this paper will conceptualise a Discourse Theoretical form of governance analysis, using the Northern Irish case as an ideal type of taking discourse, politics and agency seriously.
Author: Sean Heron (Queen's University Belfast) -
This paper scrutinises the role public reports issued by intelligence agencies play in debates on security issues. Given the secretive nature of intelligence services and the exclusivity of knowledge they work with, the reports perform multiple roles, ranging from enabling accountability to identifying key threats to national security. Building on sociology of knowledge and science and technology studies, we focus on the annual reports of the Czech Security Information Service (SIS), in particular in relation to Russia’s influence in Czechia in 2014-2018. We ask how these reports are utilised in the broader public debate and what political role they are made to play. The elusive and opaque nature of Russian actions spurred diverse competing narratives, in which references to intelligence reports have played a crucial part. SIS reports, in particular, are used as an authoritative and ostensibly undisputable source of facts, apparently proving the ever increasing nature of the Russian threat. We argue against such depoliticised understanding and demonstrate how the public reproduction and interpretation of SIS reports is in fact a deeply political matter, as it contributes to the creation and reinforcement of certain power/knowledge constellations. We show that the reports are used in ways that empower certain actors (including SIS itself) and narratives while delegitimising others – and that their meaning is produced retrospectively in this process. Finally, demonstrating how such security narratives collapse under their own contradictions, we bring politics back by pointing to the residual undecidability regarding Russia’s actions that is obscured in the debate.
Authors: Jakub Eberle (Institute of International Relations, Prague) , Jan Daniel (Institute of International Relations Prague)
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Panel / US Foreign Policy towards Asia History RoomSponsor: US Foreign Policy Working GroupConvener: USFP Working groupChair: Mara Oliva (University of Reading)Discussant: USFP Working group
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This study explains the two principal causes of the Sino-American confrontation. These are, first, the change in wealth and economic might in China’s favor. Second, the conflicting ideologies of the two states. China’s ideology is driven by what we term the “Xi Strategy” to supplant the U.S. over time. The Chinese leadership are willing to entertain the worsening of the relationship with the United States beyond trade and investment, and into the realm of security. Despite the possibility of cooperation, there is a significant gap in the ideological visions possessed by both Beijing and Washington, and in their preferred images of international order.
Author: Bradley Thayer (University of Oxford) -
Education exchange constitutes an essential tool in public diplomacy toolkit and has been long treated as a means to political ends – peace. It softly but legitimately lifts bilateral relations between participants’ host and home countries through signalling, attitude change, intercultural competence and network formation. The U.S., a sponsor of multiple education exchange schemes, has made expansion of people-to-people ties its core foreign policy goal in Asia-Pacific. Situated in such a strategically important area, Vietnam is always ranked in the top five or six among the Asia-Pacific countries in attracting U.S. government spending on its public diplomacy activities, of which the majority goes toward education. The number of Vietnamese exchange participants sponsored by U.S. government and immersed in the first-hand cultural milieu of the host country has reached approximately 1,500 since the launch of Fulbright program in Vietnam in 1992. In reality, U.S.-Vietnam diplomatic relations have witnessed national-levelled historic advancements from being former enemies to comprehensive strategic partners. Whether U.S.-Vietnam educational exchange activities foster peaceful relations between these two old enemies remains unanswered. Seeking the answer, this research employs a multivariate data analysis tool, Structural equation modelling, to study roughly 300 Vietnamese academic sojourners’ survey responses. The findings reveal the U.S. exchange schemes’ ability to win Vietnamese participants’ hearts and minds, train these intercultural mediators and possibly multiply their effects. However, that the programs contribute to peace is still a “strained” assertion due to their long-term effects and methodological hindrances.
Author: Thi Ly Le (University of Nottingham) -
Scholars and policy-makers have puzzled at the existence of a multilateral U.S. alliance in Europe but several bilateral alliances in Asia. Arguments based on hierarchical or racist norms in Asia and/or strategic demands for control over unruly clients cannot fully explain this. This paper argues that to understand the origins of variation in alliance design in Europe and Asia we must look at the end of the second World War. Specifically, Soviet troops by 1945 had occupied Germany but not Japan. The paper argues that (1) this provided greater incentives for collective self-defence absent the United States, which (2) in turn made United States participation more likely. The paper argues that it is better, all else equal, for patrons to form alliances with clients who are already committed to each others defence. Empirically the paper supports these claims by (3) showing the U.S. preference in Asia and Europe for multilateral security institutions. After the Korean War Truman wanted Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines in one multilateral alliance. The lack of Soviet forces in Japan made this untenable.
Author: Mike Cohen (ANU) -
China’s increasingly assertive behaviour in the South China Sea, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and its Belt and Road Initiative has so far produced a lacklustre response from the United States. Through the course of his presidency, the Obama administration began to reflect the limits of US power in the Asia-Pacific given the tepidness of the ‘pivot’ to Asia and the failed Tran-Pacific Partnership. More recently, the Trump administration's unilateral focus on trade with China has come at the cost of challenging China’s more assertive foreign policy and domestic Sinification of its peripheral territories. Taking into account the economic and social transformations stemming from the 2008 financial crisis this paper compares and evaluates the approaches of the Obama and Trump administrations in how they have understood and responded to China’s Belt and Road Initiative and regional territorial disputes. In short, this paper addresses how the US interprets Chinese regional geopolitics. The comparisons are orientated around the examination of how, discursively, spatially, and materially, the US is encountering new found limits to its ‘hegemony’ in Pacific Asia. The paper concludes by considering the implications of this for US foreign policy today.
Author: Benjamin Coulson -
The dynamics of the Asia Pacific region have had a polarizing effect on the academic community. Due to the complex web of cross-cutting entanglements and expeditious temporal variation of the alignments of the actors within the region, there have been myriad characterizations of the dynamics within the region ranging from being ripe for rivalry and racing towards tragedy with increasing probabilities of confrontation to moving towards a hierarchical interstate order to Asian peace and stability. These characterizations show a very disparate ordering of dominant patterns of developments. An evolving body of work on the region should be able to actively capture the fluidity of the dominant spheres of influence, different from the European context that exhibits tacit and unwritten codes of entanglement. A cursory analysis shows the inadequacy of the Balancing-Bandwagoning dichotomy to encapsulate the variations within the Asia Pacific. However, this paper will try to marry local knowledge from an analysis of the dynamics of the region into definitive frameworks to analyze larger global processes. This paper will also try to problematize the Balance of Power theory in the Asia Pacific context and test the usefulness of theory in this context.
Author: Abhishank Mishra (Jawaharlal Nehru University )
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Panel / Understanding Foreign Policy making within Area Studies Dobson RoomSponsor: Foreign Policy Working GroupConvener: MARIANNA Charountaki (University of Lincoln)Chair: Lucas Scott (University of Birmingham )Discussant: Abdulla Ali Khaled Alsabah (SOAS)
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What IR School best explains China’s developing relationship with the Middle East? Which one can best provide a framework for China’s actions there? On one hand, realism has provided a useful account, especially in relation to past state-based bandwagoning and balancing. On the other hand, it is unable to provide sufficient space for the role of the Belt and Road Initiative. For this, idealism provides a useful account, emphasising the importance of collective goals and efforts and collaboration. But it leaves gaps, especially in relation to conflict settings and rivalries at the regional and sub-national level. To bridge them, Chinese tianxia (“under heaven”) provides a third way, through the hierarchy as practice and harmony as the goal. But like realism and idealism before it, earlier understanding of tianxia is also limited and so requires an upgraded version to accommodate contemporary challenges in the region.
Author: Guy Burton (Vesalius College) -
This paper examines foreign policy in the Middle Eastern context and argues for the value of regional examples to the broader study of the field. The work demonstrates specific indicators of transformation as critical pillars that announce both the ontological and epistemological need to reconsider traditional foreign policy approaches. Beyond structural determinants that shape a new outlook in foreign policy, this study problematizes its ontology by drawing attention to the role of the actor as an agent of foreign policy practice. A contemporary approach includes other actors alongside states, while the latter remains the prime actors of the international relations system. The impact emerging elements have on foreign policy explains the need for a novel epistemology and asserts that, although traditional patterns of foreign policy continue to exist, they do so in a state of transition.
Author: MARIANNA Charountaki (University of Lincoln) -
The individual level of analysis has a long tradition in Foreign Policy Analysis. Since the early days of the discipline, the personalities, beliefs, experiences of leaders were considered among the most important factors behind the foreign policy choices of states. However, leaders’ individual characteristics have always been relegated to a minor role in the field of International Relations (IR), although a renewed and increasing interest can be observed in the last few years among IR scholars and observers. This contribution reflects on and discusses these issues in relation to Europe, by showing the promises and limits of the individual level of analysis for European studies.
Authors: Nicola Chelotti ( Loughborough University) , Benjamin Martill (University of Edinburgh) -
Foreign policy, traditionally the preserve of the state in guiding international relations, has been dominated by analysis driven largely by western scholars. Over the last decade this has seen some redress, with an increase in contributions from diverse scholars and a burgeoning foreign policy literature, particularly on China and India. Extending beyond the confines of the Westphalia system, scholars have further highlighted the foreign policy approach of international governmental organisations. This includes considerable analysis on the development of the European Union’s (EU) Common Foreign Policy and Security Policy, which sets out the trajectory of the region’s international relations. To the south, the emerging regional approach by Africa to international relations, from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to its successor the African Union (AU), has drawn less attention. In its pursuit of ridding the continent of colonialism, the OAU provided the underlying framework for the AU’s international engagement in the shape of pan-Africanism in carving out a role for an independent and significant Africa on the world stage. Building an active role as a ‘global powerhouse of the future’ is central to the AU’s Agenda 2063, which continues to give emphasis to the idea of pan-Africanism, not just in addressing the internal challenges facing the continent, but as an ‘influential global player and partner’. This research assesses the impact of pan-Africanism in shaping the AU’s approach to international relations and its nascent foreign policy. It begins by investigating the role of the OAU in providing the ideological framework for Africa’s regional foreign policy and how this continues to shape current developments in the AU’s foreign policy development and practice.
Author: Lesley Masters (University of Derby) -
Singapore is frequently – and often breathlessly - described in exceptional terms: an island nation unique for its wealth, its rapid socio-economic development, its political structure, its status as a global city-state, its ethnic composition, the genius of its “founding fathers”, its apparent geopolitical and strategic vulnerability. These narratives have long been promoted and bolstered by Singaporean foreign policy actors and state managers themselves. Even when aspects of the Singaporean experience have been regarded as having broader relevance – seen in claims of a “Singapore School” or a “Singapore Model” for economic growth and political development, for instance – these have been caveated in ways that both present the seeming difficulty of replicating Singapore’s “unique” characteristics and which foreground the specificity of Singaporean approaches. Despite their potential to overcome such limitations, critical and postcolonial readings of Singaporean politics and diplomacy have also tended to focus on domestic matters or state managerialism, rather than considering the ways in which Singaporean materials might be of broader utility for scholars and theorists of international relations and foreign relations. This paper explores the extent to which Singapore can – indeed, should – be of interest to scholars and theorists of contemporary foreign policy and transnational politics. Singaporean materials, it is argued, draw our attention to a range of factors – ethnic difference, wealth disparity, rapid industrialisation, the rise of a politically and economically risk-averse middle class, cultural isolation within a region – that are of interest in contexts well beyond archipelago SE Asia. In excavating these points, the paper contributes to a broader call both to decolonise and to broaden the ontological basis of international relations thought.
Author: Simon Obendorf (University of Lincoln)
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Panel / Why do Wars Occur and How do They End? CarilolSponsor: War Studies Working GroupConvener: James Rogers (Yale University)Chair: Chiara de Franco (Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark)Discussant: Jacob Eriksson (University of York)
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This paper surveys the political, moral and legal aspects of the concept of aggression and its implications for the Global South. It argues that the European powers employed a natural-law-based universal ideal differently among themselves, thus establishing a pluralist international society for themselves but using that same ideal to impose an unjust solidarist extra-European order upon non-Europeans. It focuses on the creation of a “crime of aggression” by the great powers in the wake of World War II. The paper argues that while the post-WWI criminalization of aggression under the new rules of collective-security enabled the victorious European imperialists to punish the alleged aggressors, these rules also allowed them to keep colonies, thus legitimizing their colonial aggression against non-Europeans and their readmission into the global order on less favourable terms. It analyses the victorious Western powers’ resistance to a legally-binding definition of aggression and insistence on merely a moral obligation to jointly defend states against aggression, allowing them to continue to play realpolitik rendering ineffective both the League of Nations and the UN as a means to counter aggression. It especially examines the US-led Western powers’ employment of universal morality to justify aggressive wars during the Cold War and even more so in the post-Cold War era to continue their imperial practices under a new kind of imperial rule. It also analyzes why the ICC, despite resolving the definitional problem of aggression and activating its jurisdiction over this crime, may potentially become a UNSC’s tool to counter aggression. Finally, it stresses any UN reforms without a different approach will not address the concerns of the South.
Author: Muhammad Ashfaq (University of St Andrews) -
In recent years, the use of quantitative methods has become an increasingly popular tool in the study of conflict and insurgency. It was thought that this approach would offset the limitations of qualitative research which is based, it is claimed, on anecdotes from specific conflict settings. Yet, this approach comes with its own set of distinct challenges. This paper therefore discusses the opportunities and limitations that quantitative data holds for understanding conflict and violent insurgency. First, the paper considers the available sources of conflict data including the Worldwide Incidents Tracking System (WITS) and the Uppsala Conflict Data Program’s (UCDP) Georeferenced Event Dataset (GED). To do this, it uses examples from Iraq and Afghanistan which feature prominently in the literature. It discusses how the data varies between the different sources based off their different coding strategies. How these decisions affect data quality will be discussed as well as the limitations this poses for conflict and insurgency research. Finally, the paper considers the future of conflict research which is movingly increasingly towards the exploitation of both temporal and geo-coded data.
Author: Tabitha Poulter (City, University of London) -
On February 14, 2019, the Pakistan-backed terrorist group, Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) carried out a suicide attack on a convoy carrying 40 soldiers belonging to the Indian paramilitary force, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in the town of Pulwama, in Jammu and Kashmir state (now a union territory). Then, on February 26, the Indian Air Force launched a strike on a suspected JeM facility in Balakot, Pakistan. Subsequently, on February 27, the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) dispatched several fighter aircraft, including F-16s, to launch a reprisal raid on Indian territory, which then led to a skirmish between fighter jets of the two countries and the downing of an Indian MiG-21 and its pilot on Pakistani soil; the pilot being released back to India.
This was the most severe crisis between the two countries since the November 2008 Mumbai attack by the jihadist terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, also backed by Pakistan. Underlining the seriousness further was that it was the first time since the December 1971 war between the two countries that their air forces crossed the border to attack. The central question of the paper is: what sparked the February 2019 India-Pakistan crisis? It examines the role of Jaish-e-Muhammad, and the rationale for the attack in Pulwama. The paper also examines the decision-making by India and Pakistan before and during the crisis. What led to the Indian government carrying out the Balakot air strike? Important questions also include whether the crisis demonstrates a paradigm shift in the India-Pakistan dyad, and the implications of the crisis on conventional military and nuclear weapons policies and postures in New Delhi and Islamabad. Finally, the paper also examines the role of external actors during the crisis, including the United States, China, Russia, Israel, while also considering the possibilities for conflict resolution.
Authors: Sharad Joshi (Middlebury Institute of International Studies) , Sharad Joshi (Middlebury Institute of International Studies) -
To analyze and predict the strategic motives behind international conflicts is one of the key points to realize the combination of academic theory and policy practice in international studies in the current stage and the foreseeable future. Also, it is one of the most considerable and challenging research paths to grasp military security issues from the perspective of international relations. Its fundamental difficulty lies in the ceaselessly changing uncertainty in strategic evaluation, which occurs at any time and place. From a broader perspective, the research on uncertainty is as well an eternal but seemingly forever imminent core issue for international researchers, politicians, and strategic guiders, notably in the current world’s unprecedented changes rarely seen in a century. Due to the complex background and frequent transformation of contemporary international conflicts, the causes of characteristics, the working mechanism, and the coping strategies of uncertainty in strategic motivation evaluation have different forms. However, they also have a common cognitive analysis framework and system effect laws in the contemporary era, and this is exactly the core topic of this paper. This kind of uncertainty has different theoretical concepts and interpretations due to diverse school notions. At the policy level, it is generally deemed as the absence of information function because the participants or those concerned in international conflicts fail to access and study information adequately. Through historical research, practical investigation, and theoretical deduction, as well as combined with the characteristics of contemporary international conflicts and the evolution trend in the future, this paper holds that the root of uncertainty lies in the inevitable complexity of the organic system formed by the interaction and mixed fermentation of power, strength, interest, intention, determination, and environmental cognition among the parties of strategic conflicts. Moreover, it points out through analysis that for such uncertainty, the reality of objective conditions predetermines its dispersive form and scale, the inherited transformation of subjective cognition directly influences its complexity and breakthrough points, the characteristic superposition of conflict effect greatly intensifies its salient possibility and aftermaths, and the complex interaction between them profoundly affects its stability and opportunity for qualitative change. Afterward, this paper applies the case method, the quantitative method, and the interpretation method to further analyze the correlation mechanism between the failure and uncertainty of strategic motivation evaluation, and explore the theoretical framework to depict uncertainty. Besides, it attempts to make a theoretical statement on the boundary of uncertainty when strategic motivation evaluation is guaranteed to achieve success with high probability. By doing so, it aims to form a more definite theoretical description regarding the uncertainty of strategic motivation evaluation in international studies than before, that is, to transform parts of uncertainty into certain ones. Eventually, by using the strategic evaluation methods in the Western academic community such as Convergent Scenario Development, Ripple Effect Analysis, Divergent Scenario Development, Strategic Relevance Check, Decision Significance Comparison, and Expectation Impact Analysis, as well as introducing the thoughts on international relations, strategic judgment, and crisis management in China’s military strategic thinking, this paper tries to propose some feasible paths to break through the uncertainty in strategic motivation evaluation against the different stages of the strategic motivation evaluation process, such as evaluation preparation, evaluation implementation, and evaluation termination. Meanwhile, it offers concise theoretical suggestions for strengthening the prediction of international conflicts and the prevention of potential international conflicts.
Author: Hongyu Guo (Lecturer of the College of International Studies, National University of Defense Technology, P.R.China)
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Panel / Between Inclusion and Exclusion: The Liberal Ordering of Movement and the Mobile Struggle for Rights Collingwood RoomSponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working GroupConveners: Dimitris Skleparis (Newcastle University) , Una McGahern (Newcastle University)Chair: Canzutti Lucrezia (Newcastle University)
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This article explores the experiences of young Syrian refugees in the UK. It looks at how settlement plays out for two ‘types’ of Syrian refugees, those resettled by the UK Government and those who claim asylum in the UK. Drawing on new empirical data from 484 Syrian refugees in the UK, the article compares and contrasts the two groups’ access to educational provisions, the labour market and general support mechanisms that should, in principal, be equally available to all refugees. This reveals the scale and consequences of the existing two-tier system of international protection based entirely on how refugees come to be in the UK, rather than any objective analysis of their reason for flight. In doing so, the article seeks to contribute to debates about the process and implications of how host states label people, in this case by de facto treating resettled Syrians as the ‘good’ refugees, while those who arrive of their own volition, regardless of their needs, are viewed as more problematic.
Authors: Gareth Mulvey (University of Glasgow)* , Dimitris Skleparis (University of Newcastle) , Georgios Karyotis (University of Glasgow)* -
In this paper I explore humanitarianism’s relationship to what WEB DuBois called ‘whiteness’ or what we might today call, white supremacy. I explore humanitarianism’s historic and contemporary role in the (re)production of racialised geographies with a specific focus on the work of humanitarian sentiments and practices in (re)producing the global colour line and unequal racialised regimes of mobility. Through this exploration I bring both a historical focus and a sensitivity to the politics of race to bear on my earlier research on humanitarian borderwork which focused on the contemporary period. To explore humanitarianism’s role in the historic and contemporary (re)production of racialised geographies I focus on ameliorative practices in plantation economies and settler colonies and their ‘imperial duress’ in modern practices of European ‘Hotspots’ and externalisation efforts. In making visible these entanglements of humanitarianism, white supremacy, and regimes of (im)mobility across time and space I draw on the work of British colonial administrator George Arthur in Honduras and Van Diemen’s Land and the current European Union’s Emergency Trust Fund for Africa.
Author: Polly Pallister-Wilkins (University of Amsterdam) -
Naturalization is the final moment of state control over migrants’ access to full membership status. Previously, naturalization was a closed administrative procedure and largely dealt with through paperwork, in writing, by caseworkers in state departments who examine applications and take decisions from their desks. The introduction of citizenship tests, courses, and ceremonies in several European countries since the 2000s significantly changed the citizenship admission process. Naturalization has become a specific regime of subject-formation suggesting that migrants should optimize themselves towards a particular subjectivity, the “Super Citizen” (Badenhoop 2017). The tests, courses, and ceremonies created new encounters between citizenship applicants and newly involved state actors such as registrars or teachers. Unlike traditional state actors who have the formal power to grant or reject citizenship, the professionals who enact citizenship courses or ceremonies have a more symbolic power in educating and addressing citizenship applicants at the beginning and end of the process. Yet, the role of these street-level bureaucrats as “stage directors” and “experts” is crucial in shaping subject-formation processes (Bröckling 2007). This paper sheds light on the various actors who implement and govern naturalization procedures, examining how these authorities are themselves governed and how they exercise their role in the interaction with citizenship applicants. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews in Germany and the UK, this paper shows that some of the newly involved state actors feel highly ambivalent about their given task to make new citizens while other, new and traditional actors actively reinforce the call for the Super Citizen.
Author: Elisabeth Badenhoop (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity) -
This paper explores the mobile struggle for educational rights in Israel through a spatial analysis of emerging patterns of cross-border travel by Israeli Palestinian citizens who study at West Bank universities. As citizens of an ethnocratic regime who are denied equal access to higher education opportunities in Israel, a new generation of young Palestinians has mobilised their right, as citizens, to move in order to satisfy their right to education outside the borders of “Israel proper”. By exploring this new phenomenon of cross-border student mobility, this paper exposes the contested nature of Israel’s “liberal bargain” with its Palestinian citizens as well as the excesses and contradictions of ethnocratic governance. In so doing, it draws attention to the potential of cross-border student mobilities to reterritorialize Palestinian citizenship and generate new and alternative geographies of mobility, power and sovereignty in Israel-Palestine more generally.
Author: Una McGahern (Newcastle University) -
In this paper I trace the expressively colonial genealogy of borders to better appreciate the function of borders today. Too often migration studies and a less extent critical border studies has focussed on the national orientation of border. regimes – as central to the modern Westphalian state. This has the dual effect of ignoring the expressively colonial and imperial orientation of borders and with it. producing an inadequate account of the re-adaption and ‘duress’ of colonial racism. To counter this trend I offer a series of ‘snapshots’ from the colonial archive which demonstrate how borders/bordering were central to imperial and colonial rule. Throughout I explore how claims to ‘family’ where bound to contingent forms of race-making and how this shaped the dehumanisation of colonised people. I end by considering how ‘family’ and ‘borders’ provide a particular conduit for colonial rule today in (post)metropoles such as Britain.
Author: Joe Turner (University of York)
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Panel / Challenges to the Transatlantic Alliance Stephenson RoomSponsor: European Security Working GroupConveners: Helena Farrand Carrapico (Northumbria University) , Arantza Gomez Arana (Birmingham City University) , Jocelyn Mawdsley (Newcastle University)Chair: Andrew Cottey (University College Cork)
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This article inquires a way to forecast NATO’s burden sharing disputes. The main argument is that the controversies related to burden sharing in NATO can be assessed in terms of their cyclic or arrow kind nature, rendering some burden sharing issues more likely to recur than others and providing different kinds of starting points for their forecasting.
This way, we identify four cyclic categories in which burden sharing has tended to transform into a political debate among NATO members during the post-Cold War era: first, geopolitical change related to Russia, second, periods of US foreign political retrenchment or renewal, third, the passivity or activism of European NATO members, and finally in relation to significant NATO out-of-area operations.
This approach helps to demonstrate that new issues and new vocabularies have emerged to NATO’s post-Cold War burden sharing agenda in addition to more enduring questions. We also argue that there are indications that the scope of the debate continues to expand in certain ways.
Authors: Tommi Koivula (Finnish National Defence University) , Heljä Ossa (Finnish National Defence University) -
Academic literature is abundant in studies focused on Chinese presence in the oceans, except for the North Atlantic. Besides the geographical distance, this can be mostly ascribed to the circumstance that historically speaking the latter has been a putative 'Mare Nostrum' of the US. By taking the theory of social evolution as conceptual lenses, this article examines the growing Chinese assertiveness at sea, while discussing its implications for an incremental China's presence in the North Atlantic as an expected natural development. Seen through the lenses of the theory of social evolution applied to the domain of IR, the Chinese incursions in the North Atlantic will enable one to challenge the limitations underlying the depiction of the North Atlantic as a US 'Mare Nostrum' in order to underline the idea that there are no forbidden waters, just pragmatic interests. The expansion of the Panama Canal, the increasing Chinese interest in the construction of a deep-water port on Terceira Island (Azores, Portugal), and the use of the port of Sines (Portugal) as an Atlantic gateway to continental Europe are illustrative examples that allow one to conclude that China's interests in the North Atlantic are not qualitatively different from Beijing's interests and naval assertiveness in other oceans - it is rather a matter of time.
Authors: Laura C. Ferreira-Pereira (CICP-University of Minho, Braga, Portugal) , Paulo Afonso Brardo Duarte (CICP-University of Minho, Braga, Portugal)* -
As both the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) strove to demonstrate their relevance in the post-Cold War security context, the overlap on the basis of the two organisations’ membership, mandate and resources has increased. In addition to these areas, an additional area of overlap emerged between the two organisations, namely their crisis management operations. Extant research on temporally and geographically proximate EU and NATO operations mainly focus on the operational, on-the-ground dynamics. As a result, different explanations of member state preferences about these operations are used rather unsystematically and separately. In order to explore the ways in which member states engage with these operations, this paper applies an ‘overlapping operations’ perspective for the analysis of member state decision-making regarding the crisis management operations of the EU and NATO. In doing so, it argues that the existing explanations of member state preferences regarding the EU and NATO operations can be classified under four categories: material interests, domestic-level preferences, transatlantic relations, and identities. These sets of propositions have different intervening factors which turn them into member state preferences about engaging with EU and NATO operations deployed in the same theatres, with converging timeframes and similar mandates. These propositions are tested in a case study of the French, German and British engagement with police training missions of the EU and NATO in Afghanistan. The analysis suggests that two factors appeared most frequently during these three member states' decision-making processes: Their contingent relations with the US (transatlantic relations) and their long-term preferences regarding their own roles and those of the EU and NATO as international security providers (identities).
Author: Feyyaz Baris Celik (University of Kent) -
Since the end of the Cold War the evolution of Euro-Atlantic security institutions has attracted the interest of international relations theorists and historians alike. NATO has pursued a process of transformation and adaptation, which has allowed its expansion to former Soviet bloc states and its deployment outside of the Euro-Atlantic area in non-article 5 missions, before Russia’s recent resurgence prompted its European retrenchment. Nonetheless, despite its adaptation and resilience, the Alliance remains plagued by difficulties and uncertainties, which were crudely exposed by French President Emmanuel Macron’s 2019 remark that NATO has entered ‘cerebral death’. Similarly, since the early 1990s also the European Union has manifested a willingness to respond to the transforming geopolitical context and assert a role in security and defence. However, although since the early 2000s the Union has embarked on a number of peacekeeping and crisis management missions, member states have yet to establish truly effective European security and defence capabilities. While IR theorists have provided different and often conflicting interpretations of the path and future trajectories of Euro-Atlantic security institutions, historians have continued to privilege a mostly descriptive approach to account for their evolution. The paper will try to overcome this divide arguing that the future studies of Euro-Atlantic security institutions can only be fully appraised through the embracement of an eclectic approach capable of blending together historical and analytical perspectives.
Author: Luca Ratti (University of Rome 3 and The American University of Rome) -
The changing dynamics of international system have led to changes in the international order and the contemporary security environment. While the end of the Cold War provided a fundamental shift, the year 2014 and the subsequent period marked a new change and shift particularly in European security affairs. With the on-going conflict in Ukraine, new dividing lines between the East and the West due to the recurring tensions between Russia, the US and the Europe, increasing sanctions of the EU against Russia, Turkey’s antagonism within NATO and towards the EU, and an emerging distaste for multilateralism the happy years of amicable security relations in Europe seem to be long gone. This therefore triggers questions over the state of European security, cooperation and the overall European security architecture. Considering the multiple challenges Europe is currently facing in security affairs, this paper seeks to analyse the contemporary construction of a (new) European security architecture. This paper puts an emphasis on the views of the European security architecture by its key players: the EU, NATO and Russia. Through the lens of regional security complex theory (RSCT) it conceptualises and examines how these different actors seek to shape a (new) European security architecture.
Author: Nele Marianne Ewers-Peters (University of Kent)
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Panel / Conservatism and International Relations: Theories and Strategies of Japanese Foreign Relations Martin Luther KingSponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working GroupConvener: Karin Narita (Queen Mary, University of London)Chair: Katie Dingley (University of Warwick)Discussant: Misato Matsuoka (Teikyo University)
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In the 1970s and 1980s, North Korean agents abducted 15 Japanese citizens, as confirmed by Kim Jong-il in 2002. This so-called “abductions issue” has since been given equal status to - and at times priority over - Pyongyang’s military developments within Japan’s North Korea policy. The extant literature has pointed towards two key drivers of its prominence: the emotive aspect of the issue and the driving force of Japanese conservatives. However, investigations into the form and function of either category and how they are linked are limited. This paper seeks to establish the relationship between the conservative attachment to the issue and emotional representations of both the abductions and resolution attempts. By examining the “abductions issue” through an emotive lens, I demonstrate how notions of pain and suffering are heightened through the centralisation of the figure of Yokota Megumi, a thirteen-year-old girl abductee, and attributed to North Korea thus rendering it a maximal object of such emotions. This then creates space for the writing of a maximally protective – and thus virtuously masculine – Japan, which is the “true” Japaneseness for conservatives and so contributes to their pursuit of ontological security, a broader concern of theirs which shapes and enables their wider foreign policy.
Author: Katie Dingley (University of Warwick) -
In this paper, I investigate whether conservative ideologies have influenced Japan’s involvement in developing Asian financial regionalism after the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis. I argue that al- though conservative ideologies exist in the making of regional financial cooperation policies, these policy outcomes are shaped by the domestic interactive dynamics amongst key state actors: 1) Lib- eral Democratic Party; 2) Ministry of Finance; 3) Bank of Japan. In the wake of the Asian financial crisis, Japan has been actively promoting the development of regional financial cooperation initia- tives (i.e. Chiang Mai Initiative, Asia Bond Markets Initiative, and Asian Bond Funds Initiative). Existing debates have mainly focused on structural factors of power rivalry either between Japan and China or, to a certain extent, East and West (e.g. Webber, 2010; Grimes, 2009) ; structural factor of economic interdependence (e.g. Kawai, 2009; Capannelli et al. 2010). In this paper, I analyse whether right-wing conservative ideologies have contributed to Japan’s proactive stance in develop- ing Asian financial regionalism since 1997. Notably empirical evidence show that leading to the outburst of the Asian crisis, conservative political figures (e.g. Shintaro Ishihara), top officials in the Ministry of Finance (e.g. Eisuke Sakakibara) have voiced their opinions regarding the necessity of Japan to take leadership in shaping regional order. More recently observers have argued that under Prime Minister Abe’s leadership, Japan’s competition with China in shaping regional financial order has intensified (e.g.Terada 2014). In order to investigate this research question, I adopt a historical institutionalist approach and conduct archival research on the published statements, research stud- ies, and conference meetings of the three mentioned state actors from 1997 to 2017.
Author: Chieh-Chi Hsieh (University of Warwick) -
There has been an ongoing discussion about the extent the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had drifted to further “right” since Prime Minister Abe Shinzō’s return to power in 2012. Japan’s security policymaking has undergone change with institutional reforms such as introducing a National Security Council (NSC) and a National Security Strategy (NSS). In the realm of International Relations, it is argued that Japan has become more aggressively realistic with increasing China’s power (Auslin 2016, Hughes 2016). However, it is unclear whether stronger realistic attitude of Japan is being attributed to conservatism in Japan or vice versa. In this regard, this paper explores knowledge production of realism and conservativism in shaping Japanese security policymaking. It attempts to answer the following question: to what extent contemporary Japanese security policymaking got influenced by conservatism in Japan. By specifically focusing on the viewpoints of security policy advisers and existing literature on realism and conservativism in Japan, it closely examine the ways in which security discourses have been shaped within and outside of Japan by analyzing think tank reports and other relevant resources.
Author: Misato Matsuoka (Teikyo University) -
Building on recent scholarship which has found Japanese conservatism’s shift to the right, this paper traces the theoretical foundations of contemporary conservative politics. As an intellectual force, a radical conservatism emerged in Japan around the late Cold-War period and has developed through the subsequent decades. The paper’s aims are two-fold: first, it develops the concept of radical conservatism as an ideological thread in the political right. Second, it explores the content of this ideology in contemporary Japan. Bringing together key thinkers of the contemporary Japanese political Right such as Keishi Saeki and the late Susumu Nishibe among others, this paper argues that radical conservative thought developed as critique of liberal democracy nationally and the liberal democratic order internationally. This critique is built through the socio-political tradition of “mass society” which first emerged in European political thought of the 1930s. According to theories of mass society, modernity – which is understood as capitalism, democracy, and liberalism – has degraded the social and moral values of traditional societies. They key novelty in the contemporary development in the context of Japan has been the ways in which this understanding of ‘mass society’ has been mobilized to a critique of the international order, influencing conservative world view and foreign policy. In short, the paper proposes that by taking radical conservatism as a serious ideological tradition, we can understand the theoretical foundations of conservatism’s turn to the right in Japan within the context of the rise of the New Right as a political force in recent years.
Author: Karin Narita (Queen Mary University of London)
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Panel / Decolonising memory and history: countering coloniality in museums and the arts Swan RoomSponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working GroupConvener: CPD Working groupChair: Kerem Nişancıoğlu (SOAS)
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In International Relations and Peace and Conflict Studies, violence has often been treated as spatially insular and located in remote, “subaltern” regions of the world. Histories that are connected through chains of violence are narrated as separate. This in turn serves the purpose of whitewashing actors situated in the global north from their complicity in violence and war. Drawing on postcolonial literature, this article suggests that the memory of violence needs to be de-colonised and histories need to be reconnected to create global links of accountability. To that end, the article claims that the arts can act as mechanisms through which compartmentalised histories can be reconnected and translated from subaltern spaces to a more nuanced understanding of violence and complicity. A case study of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s, which is often narrated as a localised civil war, casts light on a number of art projects that have managed to communicate the interconnectedness between local and global structures of violence. The article concludes by arguing that the arts can transcend political limitations in terms of developing new languages through which diverse audiences can be reintroduced to historical silences and reminded of their own implication in violent histories.
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The paper would examine the hitherto underexplored interface between public history and IR. The two fields of enquiry have largely evolved independent of each other although these intersect at numerous points. Some such intersections include the battlefield, the museum and the border. Public history, with its focus on how history is located, experienced and interpreted at distinct sites, steers away from the academic field of enquiry that characterises history as a discipline. For instance, the standard accounts of important episodes in military history such as of the Second World War have privileged a statist Eurocentric reading that overlooks the role of those who made up the ‘forgotten army’. This in turn shines light on the construction of memory in sites outside the state and how alternative narratives have chosen to commemorate the subalterns. Such experiences and interpretations, more often than not, also mark a departure from official discourses on territory, war and history as evidenced in state sponsored projects such as memorials and museums. In what ways can public history inform ongoing discourses on identity within IR? Further, how have South Asian interventions, in discourse and in practice, influenced postcolonial IR? The paper is an enquiry into how the colonial, the national and the postcolonial intersect in the domain of public history in South Asia. These layers make the remembering, commemorating and teaching of political history an intrinsic part of identity making in the region.
Author: Jayashree Vivekanandan (South Asian University) -
The proposed study would like to introduce the tradition of public history and its research methods for broadening the research and scope of International Relations (IR). Public history is associated with efforts to discover, preserve, and promote the past through various sites and manifestations available in everyday life to the ordinary people.
The study explores the intersection between IR and public history in the digital spaces by examining the emergence of various public history projects on social media platforms like ‘Instagram’ by focusing on selected public history projects from India and Pakistan pertaining to their colonial past and postcolonial present through archival visual iconography. These visual narratives have been independently sourced and reflect upon discourse surrounding politics, culture, identity, war, partition, diaspora and everyday life. The central question study seeks to answer to what extent has contemporary manifestations of public history in digital spaces challenge the embedded colonial and national representations? And what kind of epistemic knowledge gets articulated through such public history projects in digital spaces?
The scope of the study offers fresh and creative insight to IR scholars in studying and visualizing memory construction in digital spaces. The study will make use of the methodology of ‘Visual Autoethnography.’
Author: Manu Sharma (PhD candidate) -
Colonial imaginaries have structured world politics for the past 500 years. Ethnographic museums, as the “self-appointed keepers of other people’s material” culture, and as the “self-appointed interpreters of others’ histories,” have participated in constructing these colonial imaginaries by producing particular orders of gender, race and class, and have materially participated in colonial forms of domination through their collecting practices (Ames 1992, 140; Bennett 1995, 2004). Postcolonial and critical museology literatures have contributed to reflections, including within ethnographic museums themselves, surrounding the need to address the colonial legacies of such institutions. These reflections have led numerous museums to attempt to “decolonize.” This paper focuses on one such attempt: a temporary exhibition on the “Aboriginal arts of Australia” that explicitly aimed to address the colonial histories of Australia and the colonial histories of the museum’s own Australian collections. Part of the curator’s strategy was to invite an Aboriginal-mixed-ancestry artist, Brook Andrew, to intervene in the exhibition. The results of this collaboration illuminates some of the ways in which art and museums can participate in resistances against dominant racist and colonial imaginaries. While the scenography of the exhibition succeeded in denouncing colonial violences of Australia’s past, it failed to hold the museum visitor accountable for the contemporary legacies of this colonial history. Brook Andrew’s artistic intervention, on the other hand, by superimposing multiple temporalities of colonial history, including the present, succeeded in pointing to the viewer’s contemporary responsibilities regarding the legacies of colonial relations.
Ames, Michael M. Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes: The Anthropology of Museums. UBC Press, 1992.
Bennett, Tony. Pasts Beyond Memory: Evolution, Museums, Colonialism. London: Routledge, 2004.
Bennett, Tony. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. Routledge. London, 1995.Author: Muriel Bruttin (University of Lausanne) -
Culture has been an integral part of understanding world politics in recent times. As the dynamics of the world change, post two decades of our academic efforts, it becomes imperative for us to understand the newer dimensions. Museums were regarded as sites of cultural representations, as sites where culture could be accessible to large masses, but through the years the dimensions of museums and its studies have changed. The divide between memory and representation is such that the First World has selectively side-lined perspectives of the rich cultural heritage of the Global South by monopolizing over the artifacts, and the narratives which are produced as a result. We particularly try to locate the Global South through museum studies, seeking answers for the reimagining the way ahead for International Politics through a careful study of the patterns of representation in Global South and the divide between indigenous and collective narrative produced by the West. By using the post-colonial understanding, we would also try to highlight what the colonial legacy has taught their erstwhile colonies and how effectively we have been able to use it for our own good. Through the case studies of the National Museum in India and Sri Lanka, the narrative of decolonized countries seems to be highlighted in a much-nuanced manner.
Author: Rittuporna Chatterjee (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
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Panel / Foreign Policy and Security Dobson RoomSponsor: Foreign Policy Working GroupConvener: FPWG Working groupChair: Stefan LUNDQVIST (Swedish Defence University)
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In this paper, I argue that the enduring sense of tension on the peninsula have its roots in the unique security structure that traces its origin to the Korean War. While the Cold War is long over, US-China rivalry however is heating up and has again extended to Korean Peninsula. Since the early 2010s, Beijing and Washington have been playing both strategic offense and defense against each other
even as they find common ground in rewinding North Korea’s nuclearization. Yet Pyongyang’s provocations, emanating from its fear of the US and resentment toward China, only further aggravate and compound the machinations of the two great powers, which in turn leads to a “security trilemma” scenario wherein actions by one state against or toward another have the unintended consequences of making a third feel insecure or uncertain. The 2016 THAAD dispute pitting China against South Korea is a case in point, so is the sudden thaw exemplified by Trump’s willingness to meet Kim that unleashed a flurry of summits between Kim and Xi Jinping. Moving forward, absent profound domestic changes inside North Korea, this three-way pattern of interactions will continue to be the dominant security dynamics on the Korean Peninsula.Author: Xiangfeng Yang (Yonsei University) -
Great power rivalry for resources, territory and influence is once again being played out in the vast and environmentally sensitive Arctic region, influencing its economic and military security.
Russia – whose Polar zone is twice as large as that of the second largest Arctic power, Canada – is determined upon remaining the dominant player in the region by increasing its military presence. The emerging superpower China, defining itself as a “near Arctic state” and a regional stakeholder in 2018, is intent on increasing its regional influence and incorporating Arctic states in its Belt and Road trade initiative. In its 2017 National Security Strategy, 2018 National Defense Strategy and 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, the U.S. Government assigns priority to strategic competition with China and Russia over other strategic interests. These documents enunciate the view that the U.S.-led liberal international order is being challenged by its authoritarian rivals China and Russia. The 2019 U.S. Department of Defence Arctic Strategy and 2019 U.S. Coast Guard Arctic Strategic Outlook outline its new strategic approach for protecting U.S. national security interests in the Arctic. Through the lens of geopolitical theory, this paper examines the broader background for the shift in U.S. Arctic strategy and discusses the implications of renewed great power competition in the region, comprising eight states with distinct Arctic identities and interests. Some – like Canada – are intent on asserting and maintaining sovereignty in the Arctic. Others – like the Nordic countries – assign priority to multilateral cooperation on Arctic environmental protection, economics and trade, although their detailed priority-setting differ significantly. I conclude that although the U.S. competitive Arctic strategy reflects the fact that geopolitics have become the main frame of strategy for the foreign policies of China, Russia and the U.S., overlapping interests may still forge regional cooperation.Author: Stefan LUNDQVIST (Swedish Defence University) -
Since 2005, Israel has faced a concerted campaign to delegitimize it as a member of the international society due to its treatment of Palestinians and continued occupation of the territories it conquered in 1967. This campaign is led today by the BDS movement which calls for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel until it ends the occupation of “all Arab land” (including what is recognized as Israel’s borders) and allow for the full right of return of Palestinians. Israel sees these demands as an existential threat since it would effectively end its Jewish character—a character that is seen as vital for the security of its people. Israel has responded aggressively to the delegitimization efforts, often adopting illiberal action that undermines its democratic character (Olesker 2019).
Prior to this movement, however, Israel faced other boycott campaigns, namely the Arab boycott led by the Arab League which initiated in 1946. This paper compares between Israel’s construction of the BDS movement as an existential threat requiring extraordinary and often illiberal responses, and its response to the Arab boycott. The paper asks—why did Israel construct the BDS movement as an existential threat to the state but not the Arab League boycott? How does this construction impact its response to BDS and how does its response to BDS differ from its response to the Arab boycott in the 1940s through the 1960s?
I argue that Israel has securitized BDS as an existential threat to the state. Securitization is achieved when political actors speak about an issue as posing an existential threat to a referent object. For example, the construction of BDS as posing an existential threat to the Jewish state by referring to it as such through speeches, legislation, and policy papers. This has allowed Israel to adopt extraordinary and illiberal actions in response to BDS, often in violation of its democratic principles. Through archival research of documents pertaining to Israel’s response to the Arab Boycott, I will demonstrate that while attempts were made by some actors in the Jewish Agency (which was responsible for responding to the Arab Boycott) to securitize the Arab boycott, those attempts were ultimately unsuccessful. Whereas in the case of BDS those securitization attempts were successful. This can explain the difference in the response between the two boycott campaigns and in many ways, why the Arab boycott ultimately resulted in failure while the BDS campaign may succeed.
Through a historical comparison between Israel’s response to the Arab Boycott and its response to BDS we can better understand alternative policy options for Israel in the face of a growing BDS campaign; especially since some of its actions in response to BDS contribute to further erosion of its international legitimacy.Author: Ronnie Olesker (St. Lawrence University ) -
This paper aims to provide a different insight into international relations and alliances in particular by reversing the 'flow' of analysis. Much has been written on the American influence on the Northern Ireland Troubles and how the Special relationship may have played a role in altering Britain's policy options. However, very little work has been done on how the Troubles affected the relationship between the two states beyond sporadic description. in other words, we have accepted the assumption that the influenced only traveled one way.
By altering the direction of travel and incorporating elements of the foreign policy apparatus beyond the President and the Prime Minister it will be possible to assess the extent to which the relationship was inflected by the 'problem', rather than just how the 'problem' was influenced by the relationship. In doing so this paper will provide an example of how we can create more holistic understandings of alliance politics.Author: Patrick Finnegan (University of St Andrews) -
According to the United States’ 2018 National Defense Strategy, “inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in US national security”. This focus on great power competition with China and Russia poses a series of yet largely unanswered questions for International Relations, Security Studies, and American Foreign Policy scholars. This paper provides a “first cut” examination of the possible implications of this shift for US counterterrorism policy and the place of remote warfare therein. It is structured around answering three overlapping research questions: (1) Will the renewed focus on inter-state competition impact those elements of national security most closely associated with remote warfare, principally counterterrorism? (2) As the US, Russia, and China vie for influence in the global south, will the core practices of remote warfare – drones, Special Operations Forces, security cooperation programmes, and private military and security contractors - be repurposed to support great power competition? And (3) will the existing patterns of military cooperation in the global south, which since 9/11 have been organised mainly around combatting transnational terrorist organisations, be reconfigured to counter Russian and Chinese influence? In answering these questions, this paper makes a timely contribution to this emerging vein of International Relations scholarship, being the first paper to examine the particular intersection of Great Power competition and remote warfare.
Authors: Biegon Rubrick (University of Kent ) , Tom Watts (Royal Holloway University)
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Panel / Militarism, Terrorism and Security Daniel WoodSponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working GroupConvener: PPWG Working groupChair: Ciara McHugh (Queen's University Belfast)
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In 2016/2017, the journal of 'Critical Military Studies' was kind and willing enough to host a written exchange concerning the nexus of pleasure/military-service between myself (Catto 2017) and Jesse Crane-Seeber (2016/2018). While these exchanges were productive – in the sense, that, they allowed for a delineation of various theoretical tangents within the ongoing debate – they did not produce any definitive (or, even tentative) sense of where the pleasures concomitant to military service derive from or what sort of affects they entail for the 'soldierly-self'. This paper is intended as a further address to this ongoing question/problem. Beginning from the observation that Feminist Security Studies' (FSS) commitment to the 'personal/political/international' nexus (Enloe 1989) seems the ideal place to begin our interrogations, the paper goes on to show that the 'productive' image of the subject within FSS actually prevents us from taking soldiers seriously as subjects of pleasure. From here, we will go on to see that it is, in fact, the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan (1997/1998) – particularly as they apply to the matter of 'the desiring subject' – which can allow us to fully enact the FSS ethos of 'the personal is political' vis-a-vis contemporary armed forces' personnel. In unpacking these psychoanalytic considerations, we will not only come to see what it is we are actually talking about when we invoke the 'pleasure' of military service, but we also come to understand the symbolic/unconcious structure of the soldier as a pleasure-seeking subject. In this vein, we will conclude via a consideration of how narrative methods, informed by certain psychoanalytic ideas/practices, can indeed provide us a more effective means to capture the ethos of FSS in our engagements across/throughout the emerging field of Critical Military Studies.
Author: Kyle Catto (Dept. of Politics – York University, Toronto, Canada) -
The central questions of this paper are: How do we understand how police and protesters are using surveillance technologies? Specifically, how do these actors navigate the controversies over race within surveillant assemblages? The following pages lay the theoretical groundwork for best exploring these questions. First, a critical analysis of the Foucauldian term dispositif opens up space to build upon surveillant assemblage theory regarding police-protestor contexts. I put forth three suggested developments that augment the concept in scope and depth, allowing us to intervene in and move beyond the Foucauldian short-comings. The first development will engage with Critical Race and Post-colonial authors whose work has intervened in Foucauldian Security Studies, ultimately applying their analyses to and outlining racialized dispositifs in police-protestor contexts. In the next development, the paper will outline the idea of ‘machine agency’ in these contexts, denoting the underexamined effects that the mechanisms of (counter-)surveillance (e.g. body-cams, camera-phones, drones) have on police-protestor interactions. The final development will explore notions of relationality along these aforementioned elements, in order to better understand the tensions that arise from antagonistic clashes between the two groups in visual veillant assemblages. The paper concludes with a contextualization of these theoretical interventions in relation to two pertinent case studies: Black Lives Matter and Stand with Standing Rock. With these three interventions and case-studies, the paper will produce a theoretical platform to investigate contemporary veillant assemblages around police and protester relations.
Author: Ciara McHugh (Queen's University Belfast) -
The bombing at Manchester Arena in 2017 is certainly an event that will be in the memory of the Mancunians forever. As a way to deal with such a traumatic event, part of the government's initiative was to relaunch the image of the Manchester Bee. The bee, which also represents the city's hardworking past, has become a symbol of resistance, unity and solidarity with the victims and their families. After the bombing, the bee quickly gained people's hearts and bodies: Manchester studios tattooed 10,000 people with bees to raise money for the victims of the attack. Tattoos have been the subject of discussions throughout their history - being symbols of repression of liberation and social identification, for example. In this study, I explore the relationship between politics of memory and tattooing practices. Based on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, I argue that bodies are more than the product of social realities. Through tattooing practices, bodies are deterritorialized and reterritorialized into a agent of memory and political struggle.Taking into account the case of the Manchester bombing in 2017, I argue that the bee symbol represents both the Mancunian government's attempt to restore ‘normality’ to a traumatic situation and people's desire to never forget what happened.
Author: Marcelle Trote Martins (Politics Department - The University of Manchester)
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Panel / Perspectives of UN peace operations History RoomSponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working GroupConvener: Peacekeeping and peacebuilding Working group (BISA)Chair: Georgina Holmes (University of Reading)
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The quest for recognition and international status for Bangladesh can be studied through the lens of its active participation in peacekeeping especially in the post-cold war period. Although the country face ample problems internally through its home grown insecurities, however countries and donors extended its aiding hands in guaranteeing the country’s strive towards a better Bangladesh. Moreover, the coups that held the country and its citizens stranded has worsened the situation. However, Bangladesh became the top contributor very much early as far as its South Asian counterparts and others are concerned. The nature of war altered from interstate to intrastate approach and peacekeeping also transmuted from traditional to multidimensional. The core of the paper spins around the enquiry of how and what motivates a developing country like Bangladesh to dynamically contribute at such a high level amid the instability and internal security concerns especially in its early years. Notwithstanding the question of UN peacekeeping financial crisis, its participation along with other troop contributors is hypnotising. The concerns of decision making process in Dhaka and at the UN is an important question to be discussed in the paper as this has been side-lined by the powerful countries. In a nutshell there is no doubt that Bangladesh has earned acclaims and position through its unswerving presence as a troop contributor.
Author: Banshanlang Marwein (Jawahar Lal Nehru University) -
There is a growing interest among peacekeeping scholars in studying the role of agent-level factors in analyzing the effectiveness of peace operations. They have investigated such matters as the mechanisms through which individuals within peace operations can have influence, but also the importance of Special Representatives of the Secretary-General (SRSGs) in mediating norm conflicts. Evaluations of efforts to protect civilians also point to the importance of the willingness of individual commanders to take risks to do so. I build on this literature, but expand the investigation by proposing a systematic framework for analyzing the agency of the leadership of peace operations who operate within structural constraints and against the background of a specific risk context. In particular, I highlight their risk tolerance, their normative convictions, and the extent to which they are more or less diplomatic in their relations with domestic and international partners. Apart from looking at SRSGs, I also investigate how other key mission leaders (such as the Force Commander and the Director of the Human Rights Division) have an impact on the effectiveness of peace operations and how their agency differs from that of the SRSG. I discuss both how to see agency (the independent variable) and effectiveness (the dependent variable) of peace operations. I then test the proposed framework through a mix of a larger cross-case comparison, looking at whether and how changes in the leadership of UN peace operations impact their effectiveness, and two additional case studies to investigate the relationship in more detail.
Author: Tom Buitelaar (European University Institute) -
Studies from the conflict resolution field note that peacekeeping operations derive legitimacy from a commitment to micro and macro level de-escalation, and resolution of violent conflict. However, the ‘robust turn’ in UN operations has thrown up significant questions as to the extent to which increasingly militarized peacekeeping operations can still be considered effective conflict resolution devices.
Using a review of relevant academic and policy literature, this article investigates the extent to which contemporary UN peacekeeping operations can be considered a device of conflict resolution. The paper charts the emergence of the ‘robust turn’ in UN peacekeeping, a phenomenon which has occurred at the same time as ambitious policy guidance which asks missions to be attuned to nuanced processes of peacebuilding.
The paper argues that there is a high likelihood that regardless of the effect on the peacebuilding potential of missions, the ‘robust turn’ is set to continue. This leads the article to ask the extent to which military personnel in UN operations can be prepared to be ‘robust peacebuilders’, before exploring the implications are for the field of conflict resolution.
Author: david curran (Coventry University) -
Technology is an increasingly significant factor in the development of civil-military affairs. In particular, the attention for virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) as tools to more effectively train peacekeepers has recently gained traction. Where NATO is already using VR/AR to prepare air force personnel for flight operations, the UN just started to explore its usefulness for peace support operations. Although communication and human technology sciences have considered the use of VR/AR in relation to peacekeeping on a few occasions, it is still notably absent from the academic debate among international relations scholars. This paper serves as a starting point for a research project that will look into the precise benefits that the use of VR/AR may have in peace support operations, and in particular when used in the pre-deployment training of peacekeepers. Due to its exploratory nature, this paper will not present one argument, but aims to introduce fellow IR scholars to the current knowledge, usage and potential of VR/AR in the context of peace support operations. Rather than focusing on the technical aspects of VR/AR, it seeks to point at the relevance for the effectiveness of peace support operations.
In doing so, the paper will first explore the general benefits ascribed to using VR/AR in the (civil-)military context. It will then continue by placing the potential uses in the context of peace support operations and by considering how it could advance certain skills required to fulfil mandated tasks in a more effective manner. To illustrate this, reference will be made to an existing EU research project, ‘Gaming for Peace’, which looks into how VR/AR can be used in EU missions to develop soft kills in culturally (or gender) diverse environments. In addition to developing certain skills, VR/AR may also be a practical tool to develop a better understanding among peacekeepers of how they can abide by certain norms of human rights law and humanitarian law while carrying out their tasks in the field. This paper raises awareness among IR scholars about the relevance of VR/AR as a technological tool that has the potential to enhance peacekeeping practices.
Author: Lenneke Sprik (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) -
Although international organizations especially the United Nations have increasingly played a significant role in conflict management, still war and conflicts have largely been inevitable. Therefore, the role of regional organizations in order to resolve the conflicts of the particular region and as a support to the international organizations is salient. It was assumed that this step would share the burden of international organizations and conflict management could be done in the most possible manner. Much of the increased organizational activity has been at the regional level, in terms of Africa Organization of African Unity and African Union has been taken initiatives of dealing with conflicts in African continent. But this act of burden-sharing has been seen passing the buck by international organizations to other regional organizations. The idea of burden-sharing somehow ended up with burden shifting.
This paper is an attempt to find out how the cooperation between the two organizations works in the conflict area firstly the paper looks into the purpose of the emergence of regional organizations especially the Organization of African Unity (OAU) which later transformed in the African Union (AU). Secondly, it explains the Conflict in Darfur and peacekeeping initiatives by international and regional organizations. Thirdly, the paper would explores whether the expansion of organization result of a shift in security responsibilities from the UN to regional organizations and lastly, it also discusses whether any increase in regional conflict management as an activity has been experienced equally across all regions or has it only been concentrated among the ones in the developed world.Author: Renu Kumari (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
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Panel / Popular Culture and the Sociology of Knowledge in Politics and International Relations Parsons RoomSponsor: International Relations as a Social Science Working GroupConvener: Jack Holland (University of Leeds)Chair: Nick Robinson (University of Leeds )
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This paper argues that IR’s theoretical divides operate largely in a rhetorical sense for a range of pedagogical and sociological functions such as constructing and reproducing scholarly identities, the creation of research agendas/hubs, institutional reputations and so on. This paper challenges the narrative of ‘IR’s theoretical divides/fractions/wars by looking at how IR scholars actually use theory in their written work. Through looking at the published work of scholars in six IR journals from 2013 -2019 this paper will highlight the ‘blended’ rather than ‘pure’ approach to theory that many scholars adopt in their practice. After illustrating that the theoretical divides exist more ‘in theory’ than ‘in practice’ this paper will question what this argument means for theoretical dialogue and the bridging of theoretical divides. Resultantly, the second part of this paper will question 1) whether these divides can be fused once scholars realise theoretical boundaries are blurred in practice or 2) whether the embedded pedagogical roles and instrumental sociological functions make bridging these divides undesirable.
Author: Helen Turton (University of Sheffield) -
International Relations as a science is a fiction. This fiction of science (which we render as ‘science-fiction’) guides the discipline’s reproduction through the exclusion and marginalisation of research deemed uncompliant with its orthodoxies. Specifically, we argue: (i) these disciplining efforts are rooted in stories about IR’s historical development as a social science; (ii) such exclusionary science-fiction narratives limit the discipline’s ability to apprehend significant dimensions of world politics; and (iii) learning from research that acknowledges the fiction of science in IR is a way to open up, and narrate other possibilities for, the discipline. These arguments are developed from an original bibliometric analysis of co-citation practices. We use this to map the evolution of IR’s intellectual ‘camps’, visually demonstrating the discipline’s increasing division and continued marginalisation or exclusion of ‘heretical’ research, including within ‘critical’ scholarly communities. Analysing IR in this way enables us to make a significant contribution to the advancement of IR’s sociology of knowledge, including longstanding interrogations of IR’s origins and development, as well as more recent debates on IR’s growing gap between theory and methods, and its implications. Exploring what is at stake in debates around the proper pursuits of IR scholarship, we provide a unique assessment of the anthropology of group membership within IR and their political dynamics. More specifically, we interrogate the study of popular culture in IR, arguing for the imperative inclusion of research on popular artefacts, even where these approaches unavoidably challenge and subvert the notion of disciplinary International Relations.
Author: Jack Holland (University of Leeds) -
This paper will critically investigate the way whiteness is created and circulated in stories about security. Taking The Bodyguard, the latest ‘terrorism drama’ as a case study, I argue that whiteness is articulated through and central to security discourse and practice. In this story we see how whiteness is articulated against racialised others, but also through the post-racial space. This paper will examine the discursive processes by which whiteness comes to be an unmarked racial category and the power secured and wielded through this so-called ‘invisibility’ by considering the way whiteness functions in the narratives of The Bodyguard. Or, as put succinctly by Dyer 2003 it aims to 'make whiteness strange'. This recentering of whiteness is not done in order to direct even more scholarly attention to the practices of straight white men, but to undermine the unchallenged hegemony of whiteness in order to better understand the violences, exclusions and absences that it creates.
Author: Louise Pears (University of Leeds) -
Responding to current debates about the trajectory of political science in the UK, this paper argues for greater conceptual and analytical attention to the disciplining of political science. In particular, I document a peculiar tendency in British political science, in which politics itself - conceived as the domain of power and conflictuality - is subject to a range of techniques of marginalisation, disciplining and displacement. I do this via an analysis of the hegemony of the much discussed “Westminster Model” in British political science. The paper’s overall argument is that the Westminster Model should be understood as a sensibility that shapes not just the scope of political scientists’ object of study, but also the normative and affective relations that shape political scientists’ scholarly practices. The first half of the paper offers a mapping of the contours of the Westminster Model’s hegemony, highlighting its affective and normative (as well as analytic) dimensions. The second part of the paper offers an analysis of the performative and disciplining effects of the Westminster Model by tracing the discipline’s varying responses to forms of politics that fall outside the contours of the Westminster Model. In so doing, I identify three “strategies of containment” that serve to limit the disruptive potential of forms of politics that diverge from the Westminster Model: invisibilisation, domestication and demonisation. I conclude by suggesting that these strategies serve to displace and obscure the very object of study that political science ostensibly seeks to analyse, i.e. politics.
Author: Jonathan Dean (University of Leeds) -
This paper is part of a project on popular culture and the performative politics of neoliberalism that highlights the importance and shifting nature of market masculinities. In particular, I am concerned with how different genres of film – previously financial cinema, here boxing movies - have performed a masculine subject who is training for, or adapting to (market) uncertainty. Beyond a blunt vision of hegemonic ‘manliness’, I discern a turn to entertain non-hegemonic masculinities; in the process, nurturing and valorising a capacity for emotional reflection and adaptability. In the case of boxing movies, this has almost exclusively been performed in terms of a white working class ‘fighter’ who bucks the form card to realise some larger, emotive dream of redemption from the harsh struggle of (market) life. In recent decades, however, the emotional scripting of working class masculinity has come centre stage in films like Cinderella Man, Fighting, The Fighter, and the MMA focused Warrior. I argue that the emotional reconstruction of market masculinity in these films speaks to a wider revision of neoliberalism to address a set of limits encapsulated in resilience thinking: complexity, uncertainty and the (endless) requirement for adaptability. Almost inevitably, therefore, these cultural scripts also highlight the centrality of gender, race and class within – and therefore the violence of – this augmented vision of neoliberal market life.
Author: James Brassett (University of Warwick)
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Roundtable / Rethinking Teaching and Learning about International Relations Armstrong Room
This roundtable explores different ways of teaching International Relations that is methodologically aware and offers a coherent overview of IR without replicating a “march of the ‘isms.” International Relations syllabi and course design matter. When instructors teach students how to think about IR, we present powerful narratives about what the world looks like and what matters. Yet introductory international relations courses tend to adopt remarkably similar formats; most are structured around theoretical debates, known as “-isms” (Agathangelou and Ling 2004; Hobson 2012; Schmidt 1998; Vitalis 2015). The majority of textbooks mirror this structure. Diverse feminist, post-colonial, constructivist, critical, post-structural, post-positivist, indigenous, and Afro-centric approaches offer alternatives to the “House of IR” (Agathangelou and Ling 2004). Yet instructors often add these important critiques to existing IR syllabi in ways that replicate disciplinary theoretical silos. Thus, instead of providing a radical reframing of the field, our courses often present critical theoretical approaches as a “cacophony of different voices” (Hermann 1998). We propose a different way of teaching and learning IR. Introductory courses provide students with the foundation for their future studies, careers, and transferable skills. Our courses shape how students think. As such, we are not just teaching a subject, we are teaching skills, practices, and ways of knowing and relating to the world. We aim to develop approaches to teaching introductory IR courses that defy disciplinary silos, learn from the important efforts of decolonising the reading list, pay attention to the content of the reading list (including race, class, gender and colonial relations), and emphasise transferable thinking skills.
Sponsor: Learning and Teaching Working GroupChair: Ilan Baron (Durham University)Participants: Jonneke Koomen (Willamette University) , Xavier Guillaume (University of Groningen) , Jonathan Havercroft (University of Southampton) , Naomi Head (University of Glasgow) , Naeem Inayatullah (Ithaca College) -
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Roundtable / Saving Strangers in a Post-Liberal World Order? Twentieth Anniversary Roundtable Katie Adie
We spoke with Professor Kyle Grayson regarding the preferred date of June 19th and are hoping the organising committee can accommodate this request.
Abstract
Twenty years ago, Wheeler’s seminal text, Saving Strangers, set out to examine how far humanitarian intervention had become a legitimate practice in the society of states. In so doing, it argued a new consensus emerged in the 1990s on the legitimacy of UN authorised humanitarian intervention. Two decades on, the emergence of the Responsibility to Protect norm has seen advocates identify its consensual support as one of its key successes whilst highlighting the need to deepen and extend this further. This consensus-building, in part, has arisen because the RtoP has broadened the debate beyond humanitarian intervention to focus on prevention, assistance, and alternatives to war and also gone beyond the UN Security Council to incorporate the role of other actors such as Regional Organisations, the UN Human Rights Council, and RtoP networks including Focal Points and Group of Friends. Despite this, many of the fundamental questions, concerns, and challenges laid bare in the 1990s remain ever present in cases such as China, the Central African Republic, Syria, Myanmar, and South Sudan to name a few. In addition, the RtoP was born in a so-called liberal era, yet as we enter a period of shifting power balances new questions, concerns, and challenges arise over the future of the RtoP in a post-Liberal World Order. Against this backdrop, the roundtable reflects on the ever present issue of Saving Strangers amidst a crisis of liberalism.Sponsor: Intervention and Responsibility to Protect Working GroupChair: Alex Leveringhaus (University of Surrey)Participants: James Pattison (University of Manchester) , Karen E. Smith (London School of Economics) , Jennifer Welsh (McGill) , Adrian Gallagher (University of Leeds) , Cristia Stefan (University of Leeds) , Nick Wheeler (Birmingham) -
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Roundtable / THE RUSSIA-CHINA ENTENTE & STRATEGIC RIVALRY WITH THE WEST Council Chamber
The emergence of a new 'containment-like' consensus in Washington has potential to stimulate further rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing. However, it has been Russia, rather than China that has attempted to capitalise on this situation. Moscow has pushed for closer cooperation with Beijing in the military sphere, while Vladimir Putin depicts the relationship as one of an alliance type (soyuznicheskiye otnosheniya). Yet in its 2019 White Paper, it states that China ‘advocates partnerships rather than alliances and does not join any military bloc.’ The case of Russia and China raises a number of questions about the strength of commitment and support: abandonment or entrapment are both equally possible. However, in today’s multipolar world, alliances are highly mutable and we need to see Sino-Russian relations in this context. Strong commitment means realignment at a later stage becomes more difficult, and makes an autonomous foreign policy harder.
Given the declared aim for Russia and China to move towards greater multipolarity and resist hegemonism, the strategic rivalry between the US and China should be examined in this context.Sponsor: Russian and Eurasian Security Working GroupChair: Precious Chatterje-Doody (Open University)Participants: David Lewis (University of Exeter) , Natasha Kuhrt (King's College London) , Paul Richardson (Birmingham University) , Aglaya Snetkov , Marcin Kaczmarski (University of Glasgow) -
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Panel / The Political Economy of Digital Transactions CarilolSponsor: International Political Economy Working GroupConveners: Juvaria Jafri (City, University of London) , Vincent Guermond (Royal Holloway University of London)Chair: Juvaria Jafri (City, University of London)
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This paper signals two possible ‘blind spots’ in International Political Economy (IPE) research. First, it draws attention to the interrelation between finance and state security practices. This relation is often overlooked, because the themes are now relegated to broadly separate disciplinary domains— IPE on the one hand, and (critical) Security Studies on the other. Second, it highlights the political importance of the otherwise invisible global financial (payment) infrastructures. What is often considered to be the mere ‘plumbing’ of international finance, turns out to be more political and inscribed with power than often thought. To start addressing these blind spots, the article draws on literatures in critical infrastructure studies, that offer understandings of infrastructure as lively, contested and profoundly political. The argument is that attending to infrastructure inevitably brings into view the postcolonial nature of contemporary capitalism and finance. The article uses the case of the contemporary payment infrastructure wars, whereby the SWIFT infrastructure is used to enforce sanctions policies, as example to develop the arguments.
Author: Marieke de Goede (University of Amsterdam) -
This paper engages with a global migration-development agenda that aims to leverage remittances for development by incorporating remittance flows and households into global financial circuits. Previous analyses of what I call the ‘remittances-financial inclusion nexus’ have proved vital in deconstructing the assumptions behind, and shedding light on, the negative impacts of initiatives that aim to construct and expand financial markets on the back of remittances. However, surprisingly little is said about the extent to which attempts to incorporate remittance flows into global finance may actually be possible, and how and why these may be accepted and/or resisted by members of remittance households in home countries. Drawing upon research with remittance recipients in Senegal and Ghana, this paper explores whether and how remittance flows as well as the financial behaviours, practices and arrangements of members of remittance households can actually be re-directed, transformed, nudged or even ‘datafied’. Building upon the geographies of marketisation approach and conceptualisation of financial subject formation as practical accomplishments that are always ambiguous, uncertain and in the making, this paper advances the understanding of remittance recipients as ‘reluctant’ and ‘dissenting’ subjects of remittance marketisation as well as subjects that ‘deny’ marketisation through individual and collective acts of refusals. They are “quasi-subjects” of remittance marketisation, constantly negotiating dis/entanglement processes at the borders of competing networks and regimes of value. By paying attention to these overt and covert processes of contestation, I shed light not only on those members of remittance households that still cannot enter formal (digital) finance but also those that could but don’t as well as those that did but don’t anymore.
Author: Vincent Guermond (Royal Holloway University of London) -
Past scholarship on financial inclusion tends to focus on access to credit, but new research also engages with transformations in how payments are made and settled in the banking system. I contribute to this emergent stream of scholarship which engages with the technological aspects of financial access to show how common ground between debates in advanced capitalist countries and poor countries has expanded. This is because of shifts in how financial exclusion — and inclusion — is conceptualised, and is reflected in the debates around blockchain technology to enhance financial access; such as those around Facebook’s Libra, but also other claims about the inclusive potential of cryptocurrencies. I place these discussions in the context of inclusive finance in Pakistan, where privatised payment systems are viewed as a policy tool to enhance financial access. Through an analysis of documents from the State Bank of Pakistan, the Bank of International Settlements, and the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Community Affairs, I consider the scope for a financial system in which payments technology is widespread and publicly owned. My key findings draw attention to the tension between transparency and access to finance.
Author: Juvaria Jafri (City, University of London)
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Panel / The politics, legality and ethicality of non-state actors in war Sandhill RoomSponsor: War Studies Working GroupConveners: Helene Olsen (King's College London) , Keith Smith (Kings College London)Chair: Keith Smith (Kings College London)Discussant: Cian O'Driscoll (University of Glasgow)
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Transnational volunteer fighters are those who travel to warzones to participate in conflicts absent the territorial or de-jure citizenship incentives we normally associate with war labouring. Given that the term foreign fighter has become virtually synonymous with jihadi fighters in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, it is unsurprising that scholarly interest in this phenomenon has developed rapidly. The existing literature has typically looked at volunteer fighting from a political behaviour perspective, exploring recruitment, motivations and impact, or has adopted a historical perspective, pointing to the phenomenon’s continuing challenge to the authority and right of the state to declare and enact war. In contrast, this paper adopts an ethical perspective towards volunteer war fighting. It treats volunteer fighters as ethical agents in that they have made an ethical decision to fight in a war that they have deemed morally just. Subsequently, the paper investigates how these agents make ethical sense of their decisions. The paper assumes that these ethical agents lack the formal language of jus ad bellum and jus in bello; rather, these agents’ ethical reflections will be stated in a vernacular language of just war. Hence, the paper offers a first cut into how these ethical reflections are stated by these agents and how these agents make ethical sense of their actions. Utilising open-source interviews and first-hand accounts from volunteers who travelled to fight against the Islamic State in Syria, this paper demonstrates that many of these agents draw from narratives of the past, specifically the Spanish Civil War, to legitimise and justify their right to war. Hence, politics comes prior to ethics in this vernacular just war.
Author: Keith Smith (King's College London) -
There is a varied history of discussion over the ethics of conflict and political violence, often centred around just war thinking. With the increasingly explicit non-state nature of conflict and the ethical complexity that this creates, the just war discussion has moved towards the more cosmopolitan grounded ‘revisionist’ school.
This paper consists of an exploration first of Jeff McMahan’s, Killing In War (2009)and a critical examination of its applicability to transnational fighters. It then moves to examine more precisely how this manifests under the applied cosmopolitan just war ethics which are derived from McMahan’s analytical philosophy approach to just war thinking. This first section comes to the general conclusion that the application of this revisionist just war theory to the case of transnational fighters is reasonably complete within its own framing.
The second section counters this, drawing first upon Michael Neu’s critique of these approaches which is grounded in the idea of tragedy. This component draws from a number of critical accounts, however the focus is on Michael Neu’s understanding of tragedy as an entry point into the core of the critique which revolves around a re-imagining of the revisionist approach as an ethically sanitising process. The revisionist approach to just war thinking relies upon a cleanliness and that enforced cleanliness, sanitising as it were, introduces a dangerousness to an ostensibly sensible and morally grounded approach.
The paper then concludes that the revisionist sanitising of the ethical discussion surrounding war strips the just war discourse of a critical aspect in its judgments of liability, rendering it unable to fully encompass complex cases of political violence with a multitude of state and non-state actors. This sanitising process also represents a distancing and abstraction of the ethical subject of war. This paper shows this through utilising the transnational fighter as an ethical subject of war, sanitised by the revisionist process. Whilst a step forward for just war thinking when looking at non-state actors in conflict, this revisionist approach creates a slew of ethical dilemmas which require a critical and self-aware approach beyond the confines of analytical philosophy.
Author: Thomas Hooper (Queen Mary University London) -
When Lord North, the British Prime Minister, suggested, in February 1776, the hire of German troops to support efforts against American rebels in North America, the suggestion was met with loud outcries from the British Parliamentarians. One of the more outspoken was Frederick Bull, MP for the City of London, who ended the debate in the Commons with a scorching address declaring that the German mercenaries would be ‘hired to subdue the sons of Englishmen and of freedom’ and lamented that the measures taken against America were ‘inimical … to the honor, faith, and true dignity of the British nation.’ Bull saw the German mercenaries as illegitimate fighters and constructed them as such with his utterance.
This paper will investigate not only why the German mercenaries were constructed as illegitimate fighters, but also how this construction impacted the organisation of violence in Britain. Ultimately, this paper will argue that the moral objection made towards mercenaries and the widespread dislike of these actors is more than just an expression of a norm against mercenary use, as Sarah Percy has argued. Rather than saying something fundamental about mercenaries as actors, the moral objections and the subsequent de-legitimation of mercenaries are an expression of the struggle to articulate the proper organisation of violence and therefore who should fight. As will be shown in this paper, the German mercenaries were so vehemently objected against because they were seen as disruptors of the ideal British polity. The use of the German mercenaries spoke to the very issue of how to best organise violence and, thus, how best to organise society.Author: Helene Olsen (King's Collge London) -
One of the central problems facing the regulation of private military and security companies (PMSCs) as non-state actors often contracted to carry-out state functions is establishing consistent and enforceable accountability standards both at the national and international levels. While accountability structures for PMSCs do exist, they are often fragmented, voluntary, and lack legal enforcement mechanisms. This results in widespread criticism of the regulatory regimes that exist and claims that PMSCs benefit from de facto impunity. Crucial to claims of impunity is the question, ‘impunity from whom?’; there is an underlying assumption that PMSCs should be accountable to an actor, but which actor and what form of accountability regime would ensure accountability to them. This paper will examine these questions by doing three things. First, it will examine the accountability structures that exist for PMSCs, including certifiable industry standards and regulation by contract. It shall explore whether they are equivalent to the accountability structures that exist for the armed forces and their personnel as state actors, and examine whether PMSCs do experience de facto impunity. By discussing current PMSC regulation it will be possible to establish to whom PMSCs are held accountable as non-state actors. Second, this paper will examine who is left out of PMSC accountability processes, namely the publics of countries where PMSCs are contracted. These publics are often the ones who are at risk of being directly harmed by wrongdoing in conflict situations, but as PMSCs are corporate non-state actors the majority of accountability mechanisms establish accountability to the client as the party who can experience wrongdoing. By exploring the presence, or lack thereof, of publics in the accountability process it is possible to raise the question who should PMSCs be accountable to, and how their status as a non-state actor may affect that. This question is fundamental to theorising accountability for non-state actors. Third, this paper will close by reflecting upon how current systems of PMSC regulation and accountability can inform us about what “good” accountability in conflict is considered to be; who is it for, what is it for and why do we require it. These broader questions will then highlight considerations fundamental for establishing and improving accountability processes for non-state actors in conflict and for problematising current legal accountability frameworks.
Author: Fletch Williams (LSE)
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Panel / Tracing Intersections of ‘Race’, Gender, and the Colonial Afterlives of Foreign Policy Organisations Pandon RoomSponsor: Gendering International Relations Working GroupConveners: Hannah Wright (LSE) , Columba Achilleos-Sarll (Miss)Chair: Annick Wibben (Swedish Defence University)Discussant: Toni Haastrup (University of Stirling)
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The history of the women of the non-West in the larger historical accounts of the post-World War II diplomatic writings stays largely amiss. At the precipice of decolonisation as newly independent countries sent their delegations to platforms like the United Nations, several women participated in the making of what became politics of the day. A narrative that remains mostly unexplored. This paper takes on this inquiry and asks the question, “Where are the women?” (Enloe 1989). Drawing from the life and experiences of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Begum Shareefah Hamid Ali, Renuka Ray, Amrit Kaur, amongst many, this paper goes back to the archives to probe the tales of the making of international politics that lay in the pioneering female narratives of the time. These include discussions on the questions of race and colonialism in the international forum. The paper employs a qualitative, exploratory research framework to investigate the early transnational female networks and the Indian foreign policy establishment in newly independent India and their influence of the making of India’s place in the world.
Author: Khushi Padma Singh (Jawaharlal Nehru University) -
In 2009, the Canadian government made a widely criticised announcement which instructed the Ministries responsible for foreign affairs and international development to replace the term “gender equality” with “equality between women and men” in policy documents. A few years later in 2016, the launch of a Canadian feminist foreign policy and the introduction of gender-based analysis + (GBA+), to policy frameworks under the Trudeau government was celebrated by civil society, NGOs and academics. This paper argues that both of these shifts represented efforts to invisibilise the racialised and gendered inequalities of Canada’s international programming and policy. The last shift in particular has constructed a white liberal feminist vision as a radical and inclusive alternative, and reinforced the marginalisation and erasure of the gendered and racialised realities of women in Canada and abroad. Ultimately, Canada’s feminist foreign policy has little to do with a global vision of gender equality, solidarity and justice rather it rests on a desire of white liberal feminists to construct themselves as emancipatory agents.
Author: Althea-Maria Rivas (SOAS) -
In 2016, the Chilcot Inquiry into the UK’s involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq concluded that one of the factors contributing to the ill-fated decision to join the US-led war was a culture of ‘groupthink’ inside the UK national security policymaking community. In response, the government adopted a newly invigorated ‘diversity and inclusion’ agenda that sought to increase ‘diversity of thought’ within the national security policymaking by increasing the representation and inclusion of women, ethnic minorities and other under-represented groups, and promoting a culture that encourages challenge to prevailing ways of thinking. This paper – part of a wider study on how processes of gendering and racialisation (re)produce militarism and coloniality in UK national security policymaking discussions – explores this ‘diversity and inclusion’ discourse, based on participant observation and interviews with UK civil servants working in national security policymaking (2017-18). The paper argues that while this discourse begins to disturb the construction of the securocrat as a neutral, disembodied producer of knowledge – a construction that conceals the operation of gender, ‘race’ and other axes of power – it nonetheless fails to interrogate the role of power in knowledge production. Because it frames gender and ‘race’ as markers of identity and not as systems of power, the ‘diversity and inclusion’ discourse fails to uncover how organisational cultures constituted by whiteness and upper/middle class bureaucratic masculinities serve to marginalise knowledges that could challenge coloniality and militarism in UK national security policymaking.
Author: Hannah Wright (London School of Economics and Political Science) -
This paper traces the UK’s enactment of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda from the colonial past to the racial-migrant present, responding directly to the relative absence of ‘race’ across the WPS literature. The paper examines a large corpus of documentation on WPS produced by the UK government between 2004-2018 – though centres the analysis around National Actions Plans (NAPS) and Annual Reports to Parliament, as well as interview data with both state and civil society actors. This examination exposes the relationship between the collective erasure of race in WPS, the structural and institutional practices that organise the UK’s enactment of WPS along lines of race, and the gendered and racialised subjectivities of ‘self’ and ‘other’ that are produced and reproduced through this enactment. Thereby addressing the research question: How does race dis/appear alongside gender in the Women, Peace and Security agenda? It highlights that ‘race’ is an ‘unspeakable thing unspoken’ in the UK’s enactment of WPS appearing in a series of practices that construct and reconstruct ‘race’, and which are legitimised through a state-based imperial feminism. These practices are evident spatially through the discursive language of import and export which reiterates ‘race’ in terms of culture, spheres of influence, and policy ownership and, in terms of knowledge production, through the discursive construction of expertise, best practice and case studies. It concludes that these reiterative practices are constitutive of, and constituted by, gendered and racialised sovereignty.
Author: Columba Achilleos-Sarll (University of Warwick)
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