Author: William E. Scheuerman Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 0745637795 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 253
Book Description
Does a hard-headed Realist approach to international politics necessarily involve skepticism towards progressive foreign policy initiatives and global reform? Should proponents of Realism always be seen as morally complacent and politically combative? In this major reconsideration of the main figures of international political theory, Bill Scheuerman challenges conventional wisdom to reveal a neglected tradition of Progressive Realism with much to contribute to contemporary debates about international policy-making and world government. Far from seeing international reform as well-meaning but potentially irresponsible , Progressive Realists like E. H. Carr, John Herz, Hans J. Morgenthau, and Reinhold Niebuhr developed forward-looking ideas which offer an indispensable corrective to many presently influential views about global politics. Progressive Realism, Scheuerman argues, offers a compelling and provocative vision of radical global change which -- when properly interpreted, can help buttress current efforts to address the most pressing international issues. After recovering key subterranean strands in mid-twentieth century Realism, Scheuerman underscores their relevance to contemporary international theory. Criticizing more recent Realists for abandoning their tradition's best insights, he also demonstrates that reform-minded international theories --including versions of Cosmopolitanism, Constructivism, the English School, Liberalism, and Republicanism - could all benefit from taking Progressive Realism seriously. A major contribution both to the history of international relations and contemporary debates in international theory, The Realist Case for Global Reform concludes by considering how Progressive Realism informs the foreign policies of US President Barack Obama.
Author: Thomas Hale Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 0745670105 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 223
Book Description
The issues that increasingly dominate the 21st century cannot be solved by any single country acting alone, no matter how powerful. To manage the global economy, prevent runaway environmental destruction, reign in nuclear proliferation, or confront other global challenges, we must cooperate. But at the same time, our tools for global policymaking - chiefly state-to-state negotiations over treaties and international institutions - have broken down. The result is gridlock, which manifests across areas via a number of common mechanisms. The rise of new powers representing a more diverse array of interests makes agreement more difficult. The problems themselves have also grown harder as global policy issues penetrate ever more deeply into core domestic concerns. Existing institutions, created for a different world, also lock-in pathological decision-making procedures and render the field ever more complex. All of these processes - in part a function of previous, successful efforts at cooperation - have led global cooperation to fail us even as we need it most. Ranging over the main areas of global concern, from security to the global economy and the environment, this book examines these mechanisms of gridlock and pathways beyond them. It is written in a highly accessible way, making it relevant not only to students of politics and international relations but also to a wider general readership.
Author: Matt Sleat Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231547552 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 423
Book Description
Is political theory political enough? Or does a tendency toward abstraction, idealization, moralism, and utopianism leave contemporary political theory out of touch with real politics as it actually takes place, and hence unable to speak meaningfully to or about our world? Realist political thought, which has enjoyed a significant revival of interest in recent years, seeks to avoid such pitfalls by remaining attentive to the distinctiveness of politics and the ways its realities ought to shape how we think and act in the political realm. Politics Recovered brings together prominent scholars to develop what it might mean to theorize politics “realistically.” Intervening in philosophical debates such as the relationship between politics and morality and the role that facts and emotions should play in the theorization of political values, the volume addresses how a realist approach aids our understanding of pressing issues such as global justice, inequality, poverty, political corruption, the value of democracy, governmental secrecy, and demands for transparency. Contributors open up fruitful dialogues with a variety of other realist approaches, such as feminist theory, democratic theory, and international relations. By exploring the nature and prospects of realist thought, Politics Recovered shows how political theory can affirm reality in order to provide meaningful and compelling answers to the fundamental questions of political life.
Author: Konstantinos Kostagiannis Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3319596292 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 223
Book Description
This book recovers the history of realist theorization on nationalism and the nation-state. Presented in a sequence of snapshots and illustrated by examples drawn from the foreign policy of great powers, this history is represented by four key realist thinkers. It uses the centrality of power in realism as a starting point to claim, contrary to conventional wisdom about realism, that for realists the state is better understood not as a political unit outside history but rather as a manifestation of power unfixed in time. It also claims that the process of gradual impoverishment of the concept of power from classical to structural realism had profound implications for realism, as what the latter gained in parsimony it lost in analytical purchase. As a result, elaborate understandings of nationalism and its relation to the state are replaced by one-dimensional approaches. In order to offer meaningful engagement with foreign policy, neorealists often have to resort to the recovery of some of the complexity of classical realist accounts.
Author: Alexander Reichwein Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 3030584550 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 154
Book Description
This book examines how IR’s European realist tradition evolved in Europe and, due to emigration, in the United States in the 20th century. It includes an introduction and eight chapters, focusing on historical classical and contemporary structural branches of realist IR theorizing in historical and political contexts in which realist thinking did develop. It reminds us of realist key figures, such as Edward H. Carr, John H. Herz or Hans J. Morgenthau, but also of almost forgotten realists such as Raymond Aron, Stanley Hoffmann or Nicholas J. Spykman. Given IR mainstream textbooks introducing realism as a conservative American Cold War theory, this selection aims to reintroduce realism as a primarily and distinctively European, liberal, normative and critical tradition. A tradition that is almost always misunderstood as a guide for practitioners how to maximize or at least preserve power in the name of the national interest no matter the cost, but that is in fact an argument against reckless and crude power politics, ideology and totalitarianism. This book is an invaluable resource for scholars, practitioners and students interested in the realist tradition in IR.
Author: Jodok Troy Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136030085 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 201
Book Description
This volume picks up a rather uninvested field of international relations theory: the influence of religion on Realism as well as the power of Realism to address religious issues in world politics. Although classical scholars of Realism rarely mention religion explicitly in their well-known work, this volume suggests that Realism offers serious ground for taking religion and faith into account as well as evaluating the impact of religion on its theoretical framework: how religion and religious worldviews influence and affect the theoretical framework of Realism, and how Realism approach religious issues in international relations as a relatively new field of international studies. Although international relations scholars now widely deal with issues of religion, large portions of the theoretical underpinning are missing. In addressing this lack, the volume illustrates the possibility of reform and change in Realism. Furthermore, the chapters reach out to normative statements. The contributors offer a theoretical view on religion in international relations in the context of Realism but always connect this with actual, real-world related political problems. The volume takes into account not only classical thinkers and approaches of Realism but also present-day authors dealing with ethical and normative questions of international relations in the aftermath of 9/11. Offering a fresh perspective on the influence of religion on international relations theory, this work will be of great interest to scholars of religion and international relations, international relations theory, and political philosophy
Author: Alastair J. H. Murray Publisher: Edinburgh University Press ISBN: 9781853311963 Category : Balance of power Languages : en Pages : 216
Book Description
This exciting new book offers a fundamental reappraisal of political realism - one of the dominant schools of international relations theory - and of the place of morality within it. Conventional opinion has always held that realism is an amoral or even immoral approach to international politics. Recent revisionist readings have sought to move beyond this simplistic view, taking account of the concern with morality evidenced in realist work. However, unable to reconcile this theme with the realist concern for power politics, they have tended to treat it as either incoherent or inconsequential. Alastair Murray argues that the entire debate about the theory has been misframed and that by using the insights to be gained from the study of historical texts, the different strands of realist thought can be related to one another, and understood to represent equally essential parts of the theory. In a challenging and detailed analysis, Murray reconstructs the theory of realism as a coherent and unified tradition of political ethics, highlighting its cosmopolitan moral discourse and demonstrating how, once reconstructed as a coherent tradition of thought, realism can contribute to contemporary debates in normative international theory.
Author: Nicolas Guilhot Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1316764079 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 267
Book Description
After the Enlightenment is the first attempt at understanding modern political realism as a historical phenomenon. Realism is not an eternal wisdom inherited from Thucydides, Machiavelli or Hobbes, but a twentieth-century phenomenon rooted in the interwar years, the collapse of the Weimar Republic, and the transfer of ideas between Continental Europe and the United States. The book provides the first intellectual history of the rise of realism in America, as it informed policy and academic circles after 1945. It breaks through the narrow confines of the discipline of international relations and resituates realism within the crisis of American liberalism. Realism provided a new framework for foreign policy thinking and transformed the nature of American democracy. This book sheds light on the emergence of 'rational choice' as a new paradigm for political decision-making and speaks to the current revival in realism in international affairs.
Author: Richard Ned Lebow Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0197598390 Category : China Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
Introduction -- Part 1. Principles of Justice in the West -- Justice in Confucianism -- Justice in Mohism, Legalism, Daoism -- Comparing East and West -- Part 2. International "Order" -- Justice and Order Between America and China -- Reimagining World Order -- Conclusion -- Smart Power and Great Learning.
Author: William E. Scheuerman
Author: Thomas Hale
Author: Elliott Abrams
Author: Matt Sleat
Author: Konstantinos Kostagiannis
Author: Alexander Reichwein
Author: Jodok Troy
Author: Alastair J. H. Murray
Author: Nicolas Guilhot
Author: Richard Ned Lebow