Introduction

Introduction

International relations referred to the study of foreign affairs and political interaction between countries and cover the complex of cultural, economic, legal, military, and political relations of all countries and their populations, actors and international organizations (Anderson, 2006). The goal of this book is to introduce some of the main issues of international politics, such as war and peace, development, regional integration and security, and to familiarize with different ways to conceptualise and analyse these issues (Appadurai, 1991). This should allow to make a more confident decision about your own attitude towards particular issues and to analyse these issues more thoroughly, but it should also make you question both your own as well as others’ representations of the world (Argyris, 1982).

Book outcomes

 

Book outcomes

This book provides a broad introduction to the study of international relations and encompasses a diverse array of topics, from the causes of war to the politics of development, from international institutions to the environment, events, issues, and processes of international relations in order to provide the general knowledge and analytic tools necessary to understand, evaluate, and respond to a complex group of problems in the contemporary world. We will develop a broad understanding of some of the most important ideas, issues and events in international relations, and be able to better comprehend and articulate their thoughts on issues of major current significance (Applegate & Sypher, 1983).

Furthermore, the book will help the reader strengthen research and analytical skills by identifying the main actors in international politics and relate them to the contexts in which they operate. Although international relations is important due to the gradually interrelated world and historically, the establishment of treaties between nations served as the earliest form of international relations (Barkan, 2000).

The study and practice of international relations is valued due to these facts:

• promotes successful trade policies between nations.
• encourages travel related to business, tourism, and immigration, providing people with opportunities to enhance their lives.
• allows nations to cooperate with one another, share information to face global issues include pandemics, the environment etc.
• spreads human culture through cultural exchanges, diplomacy and policy development (Basu and Weibull, 2002).

 

 

International Relations

 

International Relations

International relations constitute a branch of political science, and as global society evolves and expands, it continues to search new way to link our complex world as a whole (Cohen, 1999). The dimensions of international relations related to international peace and prosperity include diplomacy, arms control, alliance politics, international political economics, environmental politics, refugee and migration issues, and human rights (Carlson and Comstock, 1986).

Today’s complex world demands professionals skilled in international relations, which is interdisciplinary in nature, mixing the fields of economics, history, geography and political science to examine topics such as culture, human rights, global poverty, environment, economics, globalization, security, global ethics, and the political environment (Barkan, 2000).

In International Relations theory, norms are widely held to be the opposite of interest defined as power, so it seems, states play by the international rules or they play international power politics (Morgenthau, 1978). But why norms and why do powerful nations obey powerless rules? (Franck, 1990). Thus understood, norms are held to be scripts of freedom, and power to be a practice of domination. It is here that this paper aims to establish a critique (Franck, 1990). International Relations norms research all too often buys into this dichotomy, the problem being that norms are misconceived when limited to the two options of either being emancipatory values against the dictates of power politics or utopic scripts never standing these dictates in the long run (Franck, 1990). 

While International Relations norms research has widely built upon a dichotomy of norms/power, more recently, the emphasis on the contestation of norms has effectively put into question a ready-made ontology of norms and thus established an interesting vanishing point (Wiener, 2014). Norms are misconceived as ready-made scripts. In the course of an on-going social process, they remain undetermined, for being subject to a surplus of meaning (Wiener, 2014). Norms may be put in charge for different purposes, emancipation and dominance, so building arguments upon norms does not mean to continue with a discourse, which has been depoliticized when certain norms had been formally established. By contrast, to reference a norm may always add a moment of trouble, for example in a new interpretation, which implies a contestation of the established but never fixed meaning of a norm (Wiener, 2014).                                              

It is a field in which we exercise our moral and political opinions and scrutinizes international relations theory and research across the methodological spectrum from classical realism to quantitative and postmodernist work (Oakeshott, 1962). This uncritical view of the past has contributed to an often licentious historical method, with history serving less as an independent body of evidence than as a trove to be plundered, and which in the discipline’s most scientific work saddles history with more certainty than it can bear (Barkan, 2000).

The first lesson the student of international politics must learn and never forget is that the complexities of international affairs make simple solutions and trustworthy prophecies impossible and the best the scholar can do, then, is to trace the different tendencies which, as potentialities, are inherent in a certain international situation (Morgenthau, 1948).

The complexity and uncertainty of human affairs is one of the many factors to be considered in making judgments, the dangers of abstraction, of dogmatism, of prediction, of action, and of inaction. He can better understand the abundance and variability of human values and the opportunities as well as the insecurities of any situation (Wright, 1955). Many different readings of the same reality are possible and even if all historians agreed on the facts, they would still disagree on the respective weight of those facts and any causal analysis performs, assessments of motivation and causal efficiency vary considerably (Appadurai, 1991). For many years, international relations has held the dubious honor of being among the least self-reflexive of the Western social sciences and it is assumed that rationally justified assertions about the essential nature of politics can be scientifically verified by observing its historical manifestations (Hoffmann, 1987). The social sciences force themselves on each other, each trying to capture society as a whole, in its ‘totality’ and each science encroaches on its neighbors, all the while believing it is staying in its own domain (Braudel, 1980).

The international relations field is a historical as well in its focus on contemporary history and policy issues, and in its tendency to read the present back into the past (Buzan and Little, 1994). In international relations, the insight that contestation is the rule rather than the exception has stimulated the assumption that international norms may differ with respect to their contestability (Bueger, 2017).  The function of norms depends on its embeddedness within formal frameworks like treaties, organizations, or a formal constitution and norms come to the fore in different scenarios, even beyond the confines of an international legal system, and thus differ with regard to their social function (Wiener, 2014).  This  emphasis  on  the  social  life  of  international  norms  acknowledges  a significant process of social interaction and, in so doing, establishes a framework for the empirical analysis of norms and norms-related practice (Wiener, 2014).

The rules are empty vessels, and indeed only can be empty vessels, waiting for someone to pour contents into what are otherwise indeterminate notions (Klabbers, 2006). However, when we assume  when the vagueness of objectives in international law is evident it is hard to see how or why they could be challenged because they exist at such a high level of abstraction that they fail to indicate concrete preferences for action (Koskenniemi, 2011.)

International relations or international affairs have a broad purpose in contemporary society, as it seeks to understand:

• The origins of war and the maintenance of peace
• The nature and exercise of power within the global system
• The changing character of state and non-state actors who participate in international decision-making (Carlson and Comstock, 1986).

International Relations and Globalization

 

International Relations and Globalization

Globalization is a multi-layered phenomenon which incorporates economic, social, political, technological and cultural dimensions (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). By looking at the contemporary feel  regarding effects  of globalization, it is a common practice in media and even in scholars to look at globalization as a recent trend emerged before few decades (Pieterse, 2012).

Globalization, as a complex connectivity, may situate before few decades but globalization process comprised of social, political, economic and cultural flows instigates us to go further back in times (Tomlinson, 1999). Many features of globalization can be found in the past and embedded in the evolutionary times (Pieterse, 2012). So, globalization becomes a fragment of history which places planetary evolutionary processes within cosmic evolution (Spier, 2010). The historical dimension of globalization indicates that the world had never been a place for unconnected communities rather there were strong evidences of cross cultural  exchanges and  interactions  from the  earliest  times  of human  existence  in the planet (Bentley, 2004). The  basis  of  deep  and  wide  infrastructure  of globalization in the past era without using the term globalization (Pieterse, 2012). 

Globalization refers to all those processes by which the people of the world are incorporated into a single world society (Albrow, 1990). Globalization constitutes  a  multiplicity  of  linkages  and  interconnections  that transcend  the nation states (and  by implication  the societies)  which make  up the modern  world system and it defines a  process  through  which  events, decisions  and activities in one part of the world can come to have a significant consequence for individuals and communities in quite distant parts of the globe (McGrew, 1992). Further to these, globalization can be defined as a process of economic and financial integration (Bairoch & Kozul - Wright, 1996).  Globalization  is  defined  here  as  a set  of  economic  and  political  structures  and processes  deriving  from  the  changing  character  of  the  goods  and  assets  that comprise  the  base  of  the  international  political  economy  -  in  particular,  the increasing structural differentiation of those goods and assets (Cerny, 1995). Similarly, globalization may be  an intensification of the process of international interdependence, a function of the growth of competition in  an  international  free  trade  system  intensified  by  the  diffusion  of  technology (Jones, 1995).

Globalization can be described as a  process  in  which  the  production  and  financial  structures  of  countries  are becoming interlinked by an increasing number of cross-border transactions to create an  international  division  of  labour  in  which  national  wealth  creation  comes, increasingly,  to depend  on  economic agents  in  other countries,  and  the ultimate stage of economic integration where such dependence has reached its spatial limit (Bairoch & Kozul Wright, 1996). 

Also, globalization refers broadly to the process whereby  power  is  located  in  global  social  formations  and  expressed  through  global networks  rather  than  through territorially-based states Thomas, & Wilkin (1997). Globalization can be defined as a process which generates  flows and  connections, not simply across  nation-states and  national  territorial  boundaries,  but  between  global  regions,  continents  and civilizations (McGrew, 1998).  It is an  historical  process which engenders a significant shift in the spatial reach of networks and systems of social relations to transcontinental or interregional patterns of human organization, activity and the exercise of power (Mc Grew, 1998).  Through a cultural side globalization is a cultural process, globalization names the explosion of a plurality of mutually intersecting,  individually  syncretic,  local  differences;  the  emergence  of  new, hitherto  suppressed  identities;  and  the  expansion  of  a  world-wide  media  and technology  culture  with  the  promise  of  popular  democratization (Jameson, 1998). Through the science of economics, globalization can be seen as an economic process, the assimilation or integration of markets, of labor, of nations (Hebron & Stack, 2013). Globalization is a process that encompasses the causes, course, and consequences of transnational and transcultural integration of human and non-human activities (Al Rodhan, & Stoudmann (2006).

Globalization is the further development of the process initiated over many centuries, reflected in the  trade expansion, exploration, conquest, migration, colonization, technological advancement, and so on that have taken place throughout world history (Similarly, Hebron & Stack, 2013).

The outcome of the process of globalization is characterized by unpredictable, far-reaching and ongoing changes (Hebron & Stack, 2013). 

Globalization Dimensions

 

Globalization Dimensions

As we mentioned earlier, globalization is consist of of multiple dimensions. These dimensions are:

• economic, 
• political, 
• cultural  and 
• social (Berger & Luckmann, 1966):. 

Most globalization researchers are more concerned about the economic globalization (Hebron & Stack, 2013). For them, globalization represents overpowering and persistent economic force  which  integrated  national  markets,  financial  services,  labor  and  firms  on  an unprecedented scale (Hebron & Stack, 2013). This aspect can be characterized by unrestricted and massive flow of financial information, capital, goods and services in virtually every part of the world (Friedman, 1999).

Economic Globalization

 

Economic Globalization

Economic  globalization  refers  to  the  progressive  networking  of national market economies into a single, tightly interconnected global political economy whose accumulation and distribution of resources are increasingly governed by neoliberal principles-emphasizing the role the market while minimizing governmental involvement in economic matters (Martin,  Schumann  & Camiller,  1997). 

Contemporary economic globalization is a result of gradual emergence of international economic order which started from economic conference held at the end of World War II in England (Steger, 2003).  Bretton  Wood’s  conference  laid foundation for the establishment of other important international organizations like IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization (Steger, 2003). Economic globalization refers to the intensification and stretching of economic interrelations across the globe (Steger,  2003). 

The  economic  networking  is  possible,  when  transnational decentralization  of  services  and  production  markets  is  materialized  which  helps  in integrated global market  and enable farther, cheaper,  faster and  more efficient  flow of information, goods, services and people across borders  (Katzenstein, et al., 1998). This process  of  economic  globalization  is  fuelled  by  government  deregulation  policies, international transportation, revolutionary and innovative technological advancement and ecological forces that asks for integration (Kudrle, 1999).   In the area of trade, globalization means continuous process of openness in goods and services market and high dependence on international trade as a source of prosperity and income (Steger, 2003).  The  countries  trade  internationally  and they  trade  significant  proportions  of  their  income Indeed,  trade  has  reached unprecedented level, both absolutely and proportionate to world output (Milton, 2000).  In the realm of finance, globalization is characterized by an increased integration of  international  financial market,  which  is, higher  level of  foreign investments  across borders, capital  flow, foreign lending  and joint ventures than  before (Hebron &  Stack, 2013).  Therefore, economic globalization is manifested by increased capital  flows, transnational flow of goods and services, march towards global market and dismantling of national borders (Hebron & Stack, 2013). 

Political Globalization

 

Political Globalization

Political  globalization  refers  to  the  intensification  and  expansion  of  political interrelations  across  the  globe and humans  have developed a sense of belongingness with a particular nation and political differences were built on these  territories (Steger,  2003). This artificial division has  nurtured a  concept  of  common  “us” and  unfamiliar  “them”  which  segregates  the  social  space  into  foreign  and  domestic spheres.  People  believe  in the  superiority of  nation  and  other’s  demonizing  image has supplied  energy,  responsible  for  large  scale  war-fares  (Steger,  2003). Globalization tried to soften the old territorial borders where hyper-globalizers are characterized by de-territorialization of rules, politics and governance (Steger, 2003).  This group sees globalization as process which resulted in a reduced capacity of states (Hebron & Stack, 2013).  It is the sovereignty which is most at risk from globalization (Clark, 1999). The risks are changes in the international political economy have radically restricted policy choice and forced policy shift that play to the preference of global investors and mobile corporations, rather than to the needs of domestic political economy and its citizens (Weiss, 2003).

The globalization skeptics or state-centric people has contend, that countries still are at the center of international systems (Wendt, 1999). Reflection of state-centric world order can be visible in economic expansion, geopolitical and post-cold war policies from the World’s most powerful  states (Kapstein, 1999). Furthermore, countries are only adapting to a political and economic structure put in place following the World War II (Hebron & Stack, 2013). The countries are changing, but they are not disappearing and state sovereignty has been eroded, but it is still vigorously asserted (Rosenau, 1997).  The reach of state has increased in some areas but contracted in others (Krasner, 2001). 

Socio-cultural Globalization

 

Socio-cultural Globalization

Globalization is not comprised of economic/political process only but affected by social and cultural spheres, where people confront major shifts (Hebron & Stack, 2013). Under the social aspect,  globalization  is the worldwide  social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa (Giddens, 1990). So, cultural globalization refers to, the intensification and expansion of cultural flows across the globe (Steger,  2003). Globalization can be divided into three main dimensions: 

• economic,
• political  and 
• social (Dreher, 2006).       

Social  globalization  includes  three  aspects  which  are  personal contact, information flows and cultural proximity (Dolson, 2005). Globalization proves a challenge for authentic culture communities through the power of expanding interchange of values, norms, identities, ideas and self-conceptions (Hebron & Stack, 2013). The threat posed by cultural  homogeneity is  as serious as  any threat  arising from  economic  and political globalization because they also somehow carry elements of individual and group destruction (Barber, 1998). 

International Relations Theory

 

International Relations Theory

Realism: as an international system is defined by anarchy and the states are sovereign and autonomous and no intrinsic structure or society can emerge or exist to order relations between them (Habermas, 1995). Political realism is a tradition of analysis that stresses the imperatives states face to pursue a power politics of the national interest (Scott, et al, 2005). Realist emphasises the constraints on politics obligatory by human egoism and the absence of international government as anarchy, which require ‘the primacy

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 04.03.2020
ISBN: 978-3-7487-3095-8

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