Pragmatism in International Relations PDF Download

Author: Harry Bauer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134076487
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
This collection of essays introduces pragmatism to the study of international relations and evaluates its potential for the theory and practice of global politics. Seeking to reorient the discipline of International Relations (IR) towards practices and problematic situations, the editors of this volume draw on the pragmatist tradition to provide critical inspiration for this task. Their book, organised into four distinct parts, aims to outline the potential of pragmatism to reconstruct IR. Through such an approach this volume seeks to re-invigorate the discipline and bridge the gap between IR academic communities in the US, UK, and continental Europe. This pioneering volume provides: the first book-length evaluation of the potential pragmatism holds for the practice as well as the epistemological, theoretical and normative debates within the discipline of IR theoretical reflections and empirical studies in the area of diplomacy, international law, public (environmental) policy and the Arab-Israeli conflict highly original contributions by prominent scholars in the field of IR, International Law, Sociology and Social Theory Drawing on research from several disciplines, Pragmatism in International Relations will be vital reading for students and scholars of International Relations, International Relations Theory, and Social Theory.

Author: Harry Bauer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134076479
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
This collection of essays introduces pragmatism to the study of international relations and evaluates its potential for the theory and practice of global politics. Seeking to reorient the discipline of International Relations (IR) towards practices and problematic situations, the editors of this volume draw on the pragmatist tradition to provide critical inspiration for this task. Their book, organised into four distinct parts, aims to outline the potential of pragmatism to reconstruct IR. Through such an approach this volume seeks to re-invigorate the discipline and bridge the gap between IR academic communities in the US, UK, and continental Europe. This pioneering volume provides: the first book-length evaluation of the potential pragmatism holds for the practice as well as the epistemological, theoretical and normative debates within the discipline of IR theoretical reflections and empirical studies in the area of diplomacy, international law, public (environmental) policy and the Arab-Israeli conflict highly original contributions by prominent scholars in the field of IR, International Law, Sociology and Social Theory Drawing on research from several disciplines, Pragmatism in International Relations will be vital reading for students and scholars of International Relations, International Relations Theory, and Social Theory.

Author: Jessica Schmidt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317502787
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
This book traces and conceptualises the changing notion of democracy and demonstrates how democracy promotion finds itself at the heart of contemporary international discourses and policies. Democracy promotion is widely considered to constitute a hypocritical and failed ‘grand international narrative’ of the 1990s and has allegedly been replaced by other, more pressing and academically more captivating concerns, such as conflict management, statebuilding and climate change. This book challenges this position and argues that the core notions of democracy promotion, such as empowerment, inclusion and responsiveness, are a key concern of contemporary international policymakers. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt as well as John Dewey, it investigates the notion of democracy and modality of its promotions through the policy fields of conflict management, statebuilding and climate change. The central development, the book observes, is the reconceptualisation of democracy from the constituted sphere of the public to the lived relations of the social. The book argues that the novel rationality of democracy and its promotion offers a particular solution to governing impasses in a world perceived to be globalised and complex, which accounts for democracy’s current but neglected centrality. This book will be of much interest to students of democracy, intervention, statebuilding, global governance and IR in general.

Author: Christian Reus-Smit
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191003255
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 792

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of International Relations offers the most authoritative and comprehensive overview to date of the field of international relations. Arguably the most impressive collection of international relations scholars ever brought together within one volume, the Handbook debates the nature of the field itself, critically engages with the major theories, surveys a wide spectrum of methods, addresses the relationship between scholarship and policy making, and examines the field's relation with cognate disciplines. The Handbook takes as its central themes the interaction between empirical and normative inquiry that permeates all theorizing in the field and the way in which contending approaches have shaped one another. In doing so, the Handbook provides an authoritative and critical introduction to the subject and establishes a sense of the field as a dynamic realm of argument and inquiry. The Oxford Handbook of International Relations will be essential reading for all of those interested in the advanced study of global politics and international affairs.

Author: Rudra Sil
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137013591
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
While paradigm-bound research has generated powerful insights in international relations, it has fostered a tunnel vision that hinders progress and widens the chasm between theory and policy. In this important new book, Sil and Katzenstein draw upon recent scholarship to illustrate the benefits of a more pragmatic and eclectic style of research.

Author: Vassilios Paipais
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137570695
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
This book challenges received notions of ontology in political theory and international relations by offering a psychoanalytically informed critique of depoliticisation in prominent liberal, post-liberal, dialogic and agonistic approaches to pluralism in world politics. Paipais locates the temptation of depoliticisation in their labouring under the fundamental fantasy of various guises of foundationalism (in the form of either political anthropology or ontology as ‘in the last instance’ ground) or, conversely, anti-foundationalism (the denial of all grounds, yet still operating within a foundationalist imaginary). He argues, instead, for a formal political ontology of the void (against historicism) shot through an ‘incarnate’ messianic nihilism (against ethicism and teleological forms of politics). In so doing, the author offers critical readings of the messianic nihilism of Benjamin, Agamben, Taubes and Žižek by problematising the antinomian tendencies in their respective political theologies. The book argues for a version of Žižek’s Badiouian politics of militancy supplemented by a proper participatory understanding of St Paul’s messianic meontology and incarnational Christology as a means to reconceptualise the nexus between subjectivity, universality and political action in world politics. It will be of interest to students and scholars of International Relations theory, political theory, critical social theory and political theology.

Author: Stephen Hopgood
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 080146983X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
"If one organization is synonymous with keeping hope alive, even as a faint glimmer in the darkness of a prison, it is Amnesty International. Amnesty has been the light, and that light was truth—bearing witness to suffering hidden from the eyes of the world."—from the Preface The first in-depth look at working life inside a major human rights organization, Keepers of the Flame charts the history of Amnesty International and the development of its nerve center, the International Secretariat, over forty-five years. Through interviews with staff members, archival research, and unprecedented access to Amnesty International's internal meetings, Stephen Hopgood provides an engrossing and enlightening account of day-to-day operations within the organization, larger decisions about the nature of its mission, and struggles over the implementation of that mission. An enduring feature of Amnesty's inner life, Hopgood finds, has been a recurrent struggle between the "keepers of the flame" who seek to preserve Amnesty's accumulated store of moral authority and reformers who hope to change, modernize, and use that moral authority in ways that its protectors fear may erode the organization's uniqueness. He also explores how this concept of moral authority affects the working lives of the servants of such an ideal and the ways in which it can undermine an institution's political authority over time. Hopgood argues that human-rights activism is a social practice best understood as a secular religion where internal conflict between sacred and profane—the mission and the practicalities of everyday operations—are both unavoidable and necessary. Keepers of the Flame is vital reading for anyone interested in Amnesty International, its accomplishments, agonies, obligations, fears, opportunities, and challenges—or, more broadly, in how humanitarian organizations accommodate the moral passions that energize volunteers and professional staff alike.

Author: Nejat Dogan
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 0761855424
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
There are two well-known approaches to the study of international relations: Realism and Idealism. This book explores the writings of Inis L. Claude, Jr., a preeminent scholar on international relations, to define a third approach. Pragmatic liberalism, an "in-between" approach, argues that a liberal world order can be sustained and promoted by the pragmatic application of liberal principles. It rejects both the over-pessimism of Realism and the over-optimism of Idealism while refusing to maintain that the anarchic nature of the international system is unchangeable or even that we can change it overnight. However, it is possible to eventually improve the international system. This melioristic approach to world order and international relations can be explained through the sophisticated writings of Inis L. Claude, Jr., who has remained a celebrated scholar and an example to students of international relations everywhere for over a half century.

Author: Shane J. Ralston
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 073918377X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
What are the implications of philosophical pragmatism for international relations theory and foreign policy practice? According to John Ryder, “a foreign policy built on pragmatist principles is neither naïve nor dangerous. In fact, it is very much what both the U.S. and the world are currently in need of.” Close observers of Barack Obama’s foreign policy statements have also raised the possibility of a distinctly pragmatist approach to international relations. Absent from the three dominant theoretical perspectives in the field—realism, idealism and constructivism—is any mention of pragmatism, except in the very limited, instrumentalist sense of choosing appropriate foreign policy tools to achieve proposed policy objectives. The key commitments of any international relations approach in the pragmatist tradition could include a flexible approach to crafting policy ends, theory integrally related to practice, a concern for both the normative and explanatory dimensions of international relations research, and policy means treated as hypotheses for experimental testing. Following the example of classic pragmatists such as John Dewey and neo-pragmatists like Richard Rorty, international relations scholars and foreign policy practitioners would have to forgo grand theories, instead embracing a situationally-specific approach to understanding and addressing emerging global problems. Unfortunately, commentary on the relationship between philosophical pragmatism and international relations has been limited. The authors in Philosophical Pragmatism and International Relations remedies this lacuna by exploring ways in which philosophical pragmatism, both classic and contemporary, can inform international relations theory and foreign policy practice today.

Author: Ursula Jasper
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136759123
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book examines the puzzle of why some states acquire nuclear weapons, whereas others refrain from trying to do so – or even renounce them. Based on the predominant theoretical thinking in International Relations it is often assumed that nuclear proliferation is inevitable, given the anarchic nature of the international system. Proliferation is thus often explained by vague references to states’ insecurity in an anarchic environment. Yet, elusive generalisations and grand, abstract theories inhibit a more profound and detailed knowledge of the very political processes that lead towards nuclearisation or its reversal. Drawing upon the philosophical and social-theoretical insights of American pragmatism, The Politics of Nuclear Non-Proliferation provides a theoretically innovative and practically useful framework for the analysis of states’ nuclear proliferation policies. Rather than reccounting a parsimonious, lean account of proliferation, the framework allows for the incorporation of multiple paradigms in order to depict the complex political contestation underlying states’ proliferation decisions. This pragmatist framework of analysis offers ways of overcoming long-standing metatheoretical gridlocks in the IR discipline and encourages scholars to reorient their efforts towards imminent "real-world" challenges. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, international security and IR theory.