CIAO DATE: 2/08
Journal of International Relations and Development
Volume 7, Number 4, December 2004
Editorial
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Editorial Note on recurrent themes and a call for special issues
Articles
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Just defending national interests? Understanding French policy towards Iraq since the end of the Gulf War
Alex Macleod
If we limit ourselves to a rationalist interpretation of French policy towards Iraq after the Gulf War, then we will get an incomplete picture of the reasons driving that policy. In particular, we will not be able to explain such anomalies as the French decision to use the veto against a United States-inspired draft resolution in the United Nations Security Council, and which would appear contrary to realist expectations. In the place of rationalist approaches, this article proposes an identity-based interpretation, which can account for changes in national identity, and which includes the fight for recognition by other international actors of the various identities assumed by France during this period. It then offers an analysis of French policy towards Iraq, first during the period of United Nations sanctions against that country, and then in the run-up to the United States decision to go to war, which contradicts a very prevalent American view that France was simply following a policy based on a very selfish conception of national interest aimed at countering the United States at every turn. It concludes with a brief reflection on the very mixed results of French policy in terms of promoting and defending certain identities and the struggle for recognition.
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Security and the democratic scene: desecuritization and emancipation
Claudia Aradau
While the Copenhagen School has provided security analysts with important tools for illuminating processes of threat construction, the reverse processes of un-making security or desecuritization have remained seriously underspecified. Informed by a critical sensibility, this article asks the question 'how can desecuritization be thought' and argues, contra the Copenhagen School, that desecuritization has to be tackled first politically and not analytically. I show that the dynamics of securitization/desecuritization raise questions about the type of politics we want, whether that is democratic politics of universal norms and slow procedures or the exceptional politics of speed and enemy exclusion. I subsequently propose a different concept of emancipation, which is informed by the principles of universality and recognition. This concept distances itself from both desecuritization and the equation of emancipation with security by Critical Security Studies since it has a different logic from the non-democratic and exclusionary logic of security and it engages more thoroughly with both democratic politics and the 'conditions' in which securitization becomes possible.
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Understanding national IR disciplines outside the United States: political culture and the construction of International Relations in Denmark
Henrik Ø Breitenbauch and Anders Wivel
The conventional view of the discipline of international relations (IR) as an 'American social science' leaves little room for national traditions of international relations theorizing. We challenge this view by constructing and applying a theoretical model conceptualizing the relationship between societal and scientific developments and the construction of national IR disciplines. Taking our point of departure in this model, we map the gradual development of the study of international relations as an academic discipline in Denmark and explain how the form and content of the Danish discipline continue to reflect important traits of that country's political culture. We argue that the effect of political culture is subject to structural constraints set by geopolitics, market size and global theoretical trends. In accordance with this view, the American influence on the discipline is seen as a structural constraint defining the boundaries of the discipline and serving as a major source of global theoretical trends.
Book Review
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Global Civil Society: An Answer to War
Anna Leander
Polity Press, Cambridge, 2003, 200pp.
ISBN: 0-7456-2758-7
Mary Kaldor -
The European Finality Debate and its National Dimensions
Jonathan P J White
CSIS Press, Washington DC, 2003, 297pp.
ISBN: 0892064277
Simon Serfaty (ed.) -
European Integration and Political Conflict
Glen Segell
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004, 280pp.
ISBN: 0521535050
Gary Marks and Marco R. Steenbergen (eds) -
States and Regions in the European Union: Institutional Adaptation in Germany and Spain
Tereza Slepičková
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002, 269pp.
ISBN: 0-521-00860-3
Tanja A. Börzel -
Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security
Jiríšedivýa
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, 564pp.
ISBN: 0-521-81412-X
Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver -
Book Review List
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Index to volume 7, 2004
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Acknowledgement of external reviewers