Observing International Relations


Book Description

Observing International Relations draws upon the modern systems theory of society, developed by Niklas Luhmann, to provide new perspectives on central aspects of contemporary world society and to generate theoretically informed insights on the possibilities and limits of regulation in global governance. The authors develop a Luhmannian theory of world society by contrasting it with competing notions of international society, critically discussing the use of modern systems theory in international relations theory and assessing its treatment of central concepts within international relations, such as power, sovereignty, governance and war.




International Relations


Book Description

A 'Day 0' introduction to International Relations. Written by a range of emerging and established experts, the chapters offer a broad sweep of the basic components of International Relations and the key contemporary issues that concern the discipline. The narrative arc forms a complete circle, taking readers from no knowledge to competency.




Human Beings in International Relations


Book Description

Asks how, why and to what ends humans appear in international relations theories and how this makes us interpret world politics.




Encounters with World Affairs


Book Description

This book is designed to familiarise students with leading International Relations (IR) theories and their explanation of political events, phenomena, and processes which cross the territorial boundaries of the state. Thus, students will be exposed to the interplay between power, interest, ideas, identity, and resistance, in explaining continuity and change in international relations. Developed to provide students with the analytical tools and intellectual frameworks needed to understand the behaviour of different international actors in contemporary global affairs. This textbook responds to the challenges of a dynamic job market by assisting students to gain both thorough theoretical knowledge and training them to apply this knowledge to real world problems. In short, this textbook delivers: A comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach to the examination of national, regional and global trends in politics, economics and socio-cultural developments allowing students to understand: • the practice and theory of contemporary international relations • the politics, culture, history, and economies of different regions around the world • the role played by international interactions, culture, and government in local, national, and global settings. Equipping students with the proficiency: • to understand and interpret the dynamics, patterns, and issues of global affairs • to know how to get more information about particular questions • to evaluate that information independently and effectively. To these ends, the textbook provides a number of features that will appeal to students and avoids overwhelming students with chapters on topics which (in practice) are rarely on courses, while nonetheless providing a comprehensive overview of the field. Introduces students to the main debates, topics, and terms in the field and allows them to decide which they would like to focus on in their further studies.




Soft Power


Book Description

This book explores the phenomenon of soft power in international relations. In the context of current discourses on power and global power shift s, it puts forward a comprehensive taxonomy of soft power and outlines a methodological roadmap for its empirical study. To that end, the book classifies soft power into distinct components - resources, instruments, reception, and outcomes - and identifies relevant indicators for each of these categories. Moreover, the book integrates previously neglected aspects into the concept of soft power, including the significance of (political) personalities. A broad range of historical examples is drawn upon to illustrate the effects of soft power in international relations in an innovative and analytically differentiated way. A central methodological contribution of this book consists in highlighting the value of comparative-historical analysis (CHA) as a promising approach for empirical analyses of the soft power of different actors on the international stage. By introducing a comprehensive taxonomy of soft power, the book offers an innovative and substantiated perspective on a pivotal phenomenon in today’s international relations. As the forces of attraction in world politics continue to gain in importance, it provides a valuable asset for a broad readership. This book was the winner of the 2021 ifa (German Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations) Research Award on Foreign Cultural Policy. “In this important and thoughtful book, Hendrik Ohnesorge explains and advances our knowledge of the ways that soft power, public diplomacy, and charismatic personal diplomacy are shaping the international relations of our global information age.” Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Harvard University and author of The Future of Power




An Introduction to International Relations


Book Description

Invaluable to students and those approaching the subject for the first time, An Introduction to International Relations, Second Edition provides a comprehensive and stimulating introduction to international relations, its traditions and its changing nature in an era of globalisation. Thoroughly revised and updated, it features chapters written by a range of experts from around the world. It presents a global perspective on the theories, history, developments and debates that shape this dynamic discipline and contemporary world politics. Now in full-colour and accompanied by a password-protected companion website featuring additional chapters and case studies, this is the indispensable guide to the study of international relations.




International Relations and the Problem of Time


Book Description

What is time and how does it influence our knowledge of international politics? For decades International Relations (IR) paid little explicit attention to time. Recently this began to change as a range of scholars took an interest in the temporal dimensions of politics. Yet IR still has not fully addressed the issue of why time matters in international politics, nor has it reflected on its own use of time — how temporal ideas affect the way we work to understand political phenomena. Moreover, IR remains beholden to two seemingly contradictory visions of time: the time of the clock and a longstanding tradition treating time as a problem to be solved. International Relations and the Problem of Time develops a unique response to these interconnected puzzles. It reconstructs IR's temporal imagination by developing an argument that all times - from natural rhythms to individual temporal experience - spring from social and practical timing activities, or efforts to establish meaningful and useful relationships in complex and dynamic settings. In IR's case, across a surprisingly wide range of approaches scholars employ narrative timing techniques to make sense of confounding processes and events. This innovative account of time provides a more systematic and rigorous explanation for time in international politics. It also develops provocative insights about IR's own history, its key methodological commitments, supposedly 'timeless' statistical methods, historical institutions, and the critical vanguard of time studies. This book invites us to reimagine time, and in so doing to significantly rethink the way we approach the analysis of international politics.




The European Parliament and its International Relations


Book Description

Following the Lisbon Treaty, the powers of the European Parliament in external relations have gradually expanded and it is increasingly influencing the foreign policy of the European Union. This book analyses the role of the European Parliament as an international actor and presents a new debate about its role outside the EU territory. It explores different policy areas including human rights, international aid, trade, crisis management and the environment to provide a systematic analysis of the modern global role of the European Parliament. The book also considers the European Parliament’s regional interactions with Africa, Latin America, the United States, Asia and the Middle East. With a common analytical framework and research covering the lifespan of the European Parliament from its first direct elections in 1979 to the present day, this comprehensive volume presents an unparalleled analysis of one of the most important institutions in the European Union. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of European Union politics and institutions, European policy, government, international relations and European history.




Max Weber and International Relations


Book Description

Max Weber explored the political, epistemological and ethical problems of modernity, and understood how closely connected they were. His efforts are imaginative, sophisticated, even inspiring, but also flawed. Weber's epistemological successes and failures highlight unresolvable tensions that are just as pronounced today and from which we have much to learn. This edited collection of essays offers novel readings of Weber's politics, approach to knowledge, rationality, counterfactuals, ideal types, power, bureaucracy, the state, history, and the non-Western world. The conclusions look at how some of his prominent successors have addressed or finessed the tensions of the epistemological between subjective values and subjective knowledge; the sociological between social rationalization and irrational myths; the personal among conflicting values; the political between the kinds of leaders democracies select and the national tasks that should be performed; and the tragic between human conscience and worldly affairs.




Global Cooperation and the Human Factor in International Relations


Book Description

This book aims to pave the way for a new interdisciplinary approach to global cooperation research. It does so by bringing in disciplines whose insights about human behaviour might provide a crucial yet hitherto neglected foundation for understanding how and under which conditions global cooperation can succeed. As the first profoundly interdisciplinary book dealing with global cooperation, it provides the state of the art on human cooperation in selected disciplines (evolutionary anthropology and biology, decision-sciences, social psychology, complex system sciences), written by leading experts. The book argues that scholars in the field of global governance should know and could learn from what other disciplines tell us about the capabilities and limits of humans to cooperate. This new knowledge will generate food for thought and cause creative disturbances, allowing us a different interpretation of the obstacles to cooperation observed in world politics today. It also offers first accounts of interdisciplinary global cooperation research, for instance by exploring the possibilities and consequences of global we-identities, by describing the basic cooperation mechanism that are valid across disciplines, or by bringing an evolutionary perspective to diplomacy. This book will be of great interest to scholars and postgraduates in International Relations, Global Governance and International Development.